As of November 5, 2013, my website, PhonePOPUP.com has been online for roughly 2 years. During that time I have submitted a descent amount of product ideas to Google privately in various online methods. The time has come to start blogging those ideas here and see where they go. Today I have 2 Google Reader alternative ideas I am proposing for Google to consider within 2 of their existing products (Chrome and Google Plus) that could offer loyal Google Reader users 2 Google Reader alternatives.
Google Reader Alternative 1: Google could combine Chrome bookmarks with rss feeds from websites
Feel free to access your Chrome bookmarks by pressing and holding CTRL and SHIFT keys, then while holding CTRL and SHIFT keys, press and release the letter O. Pressing those keys as mentioned will bring up your list of Chrome bookmarks.
When viewing your Chrome bookmarks you will notice a similar view to how Google reader looked. The idea I am proposing would be to combine Chrome bookmarks and rss feeds to work in unison so that when a Chrome user bookmarks one of their favorite websites, Chrome would then prompt the user to select which rss feeds he/she would like to subscribe to. This would allow Chrome users the ability to quickly access both their bookmarks and rss feeds all within 1 place in Chrome.
Combining Chrome bookmarks with rss feeds from websites could be a pretty sweet Google Reader alternative.
Google Reader Alternative 2: Google could combine Google Plus with rss feeds from websites
The way this could work is when you would follow a page on Google Plus, the drop down menu you usually see with the names of the circles you have to choose from would have an additional row labeled "rss". Clicking the blank checkbox to the left of the rss row would then drop down an additional menu that could prompt a user to select specific rss feeds of his/her choice.
Google Plus users could access the rss feeds they subscribed to through their Google Plus feed. The Google Plus feed is really the best place to view all rss feeds you had subscribed to.
Another UI enhancement that goes right along with my 2nd Google Reader alternative here would be to add 3 toggle buttons within the left sidebar in Google Plus that is currently labeled "Home". The 3 buttons could also be added within an additional tab labeled "rss" on the top of Google Plus as well. The 3 buttons could be labeled as follows:
Button 1: G+ only
Button 2: rss only
Button 3: G+ and rss
The 3 view toggle buttons would change a Google Plus user's view of their feed to whichever of the 3 buttons they selected. Of course, no more than 1 button could be pressed at the same time. This 3 button UI enhancement could provide a quick way to change the view of a user's Google Plus feed.
The current Google Plus feed is only a view of Google Plus posts made by each page. My idea would combine posts from Google Plus with rss feeds and would give Google Plus users the ability to keep and combine 2 of their favorite components of news consumption: Google Plus posts and rss feeds into 1 feed with 3 different viewing options to choose from: G+ only, rss only and both G+ and rss.
For now Google themselves have offered the following alternatives to Google Reader.
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