In terms of sheer volume, there is little I do more online every day than share Google Reader items. According to my Google Reader trends statistics, I have shared 743 separate items in the last 30 days, at a rate of just under 25 a day, including weekends - no doubt adding up to more individual updates than all my blog posts, tweets, Delicious bookmarks and Smugmug updates combined. There's no question that Google Reader plays a big role in how I both consume and share data. So when I heard the PubSubHubbub team had turned their attention to these feeds, that was big news. The move, which was announced Wednesday, means that updates to the link blog will propagate in near real-time. As I share items one by one, they will hit FriendFeed, as well as those who have subscribed to the feed, using RSS, in Google Reader or other feed readers.
My Google Reader Sharing Activity Is Accelerating
Interestingly, it looks like the move was not an official Google project, taking place in engineers' "20% time", pushed forward by Google Reader engineer Mihai Parparita, Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin. I for one am glad the techie trio teamed up, as this means yet another one of my key outposts on the Web is now powered in realtime.
As I've discussed before, I share what I do on Google Reader because I know there are a good number of people connected who rely on me to be an information filter. Similar too is the position that Rob Diana holds, as he dictates in his own coverage of the story, "Google Decided Reader Will Be The Real Time Hub" Rob shares about 35 items a day, and shows no sign of slowing down - which is awesome. Now, with PubSubHubbub, if there is any slowdown, it's clear it's with me, because Google has the gas pedal pushed all the way to the floor.
See also: PubSubHubbub: Real-Time Feeds and Real-Time Feedback Too? from July 17th.