Sunday, August 23rd came and went without a peep from Google's Blogger Team, despite the service celebrating its tenth anniversary from its initial founding at Pyra Labs. Cynically, you might construe this silence as Google's not making the product a top priority, or maybe, you could even think that Blogger is ceding the visibility game to other challengers, such as WordPress. But that's far from the case. While WordPress might have a higher level of geek cred, Blogger has many more users, and the company has prepared a slew of updates that should roll out in the next few weeks - which will be welcomed. Don't expect a mass revamp on the level of a "2.0" moniker, but instead, many smaller iterations, either catching up to the competition, or taking advantage of the service's large installed base.

Interestingly, Blogger mentioned their upcoming 10-year mark back on June 18th, and again, this last week, on August 17th, when they said: "we wanted to give you some presents to commemorate this milestone and thank you for letting us be part of your story. Over the next several weeks we will be releasing a number of new features..."

In a given day, I get the opportunity to publish to WordPress, TypePad and Blogger, assuming I update blogs here, at work, or make an addition to my mom's site - still going strong since 2004. Each has its unique differences and challenges. I know that by sticking with Blogger, I've gained some benefits with ease of publishing, and some downsides as advanced widgets make their way to other platforms first. But if I thought the platform were standing still, I'd have jumped, and I know it's not. I'm looking forward to the new releases, as they happen, and congratulate the team on their hitting the big 1-0. Expect more news soon.

See also: Google's Blogger Challenge: Win the Marathon and Don't Bonk.

Criticism of public relations, advertising and marketing is everywhere. Seesmic's Loic Le Meur has been giving a presentation over the last few months saying that they "suck". And agencies need to adapt quickly to be ready for the changes that are seen in social media, the economy and traditional word of mouth.

Next week, on Thursday August 27th, I will be taking part in a panel with Loic, Guy Kawasaki, Steve Patrizi of LinkedIn and Renee Blodgett of Magic Sauce Media, hosted by the San Francisco American Marketing Association, discussing:

• Is Loic overstating his case?
• Where are the traditional Advertising, PR, and Marketing agencies failing?
• What new tools and methods are being used to bypass the need for traditional agencies?
• What’s next for agencies? What’s next for businesses?

Want to attend?

Ticket Info: SFAMA Members – $35 Non-members – $45
Event Info: SFama.org

For those out of the area, I have it on good word that a UStream video is being prepared as well.

For the world's leading RSS reader, integrating social functions hasn't always been drop-dead simple and easy. With each new addition, be it the recent "Send To" features, the addition of "likes", or the ability to selectively enable friends to make comments on your shared items, the service needs to scale in a way that has brought many other Web-based feed readers to its knees - compounded by Google Reader's accelerating user base. And while the company works to make sharing and engaging simpler, I am already seeing a rapid rise in conversations within Google Reader, both on my own posts, and on those from others I share. Recently, the total number of comments on some posts has even eclipsed those natively here on my site, or on FriendFeed, Facebook or anywhere else.


Almost 600 people can comment on my Reader shares.
Since starting my shared items link blog in Google Reader a few years ago, I've passed along almost 10,000 links (a point I may pass by the end of the month). I recognize my pace of sharing between 20 and 30 items a day is on the high end, but these selections represent the top 4 to 5% of all articles I see online, with the intent of passing on only the best to those who consume the shares downstream. I've even had some people say they have unsubscribed from reading feeds directly, trusting me to be a human filter. That's a little daunting, but a task I can take.

You might remember that back in March, Google turned on comments on these shared items. Though activity was initially slow, I have seen increased velocity, especially after reorganizing my contacts.

As Google Reader does not have public comments on shared items that are visible to everyone, they have taken the middle road - showing these comments to those who are also subscribed to the shares, and only enabling those people to comment who have been added to a specific group by the sharer. After several hundred people had signed up to follow my shares, and I was seeing only a little activity, I realized the problem was mine, so I took some time to organize all my contacts, and enable everyone who follows with the ability to comment, just like in FriendFeed or Facebook. This part is critical, so if you do have a lot of people following your shares, go to your sharing settings in reader, and make sure that they are in a folder that has access.


Each of My Friends Is In a Group that Has Access to Commenting


This Article On Lazyfeed saw Dozens of Comments In Google Reader
With that change, people who may previously have been watching the shares go by, but couldn't comment, now can - and the results have been very interesting. Some of the more popular threads on shares from me have seen on the order of dozens of comments, even when the original post may only have shown a handful on the original blog.


Another Popular Topic of Discussion Within the Reader Shares
While a few years ago, this could have been considered the end of the world by some bloggers, the social Web has grown to understand that distributed conversations are taking place. By Google Reader enabling conversations to happen through their application, readers can act on the news immediately, without having to open a new window and participate there. It's also had me rethinking whether I should be self-sharing, in effect sharing my own posts when they get into Reader. I've personally tried to share only a subset of what I consider the best, but now that I have seen people engage right from within the app, it makes me think I should just share them all and enable the comments to take place where my readers are comfortable.

Now, every time I log into Google Reader, not only do I see new feed items to read, but I see new follower requests looking to see the shared link blog - and also, in bold, a "Comment View" which takes me to see all the comments, not just on items that I have shared, but on items shared by people whose shares that I follow. Google Reader, in a matter of months, has become a very serious part of the conversation. In light of the uncertainty around FriendFeed and how that company will integrate with Facebook, I am betting that some people are looking back at their RSS reader for information consumption and now, social discussion.

So go ahead, comment on my items in Google Reader. I don't need all the comments here. To find my shared items, head to: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/louisgray, and let's get connected.

The Web is speeding up, and Google is playing a big role in making how we get our information faster - no matter its type. Recently, a pair of the company's engineers, Brett Slatkin and Brad Fitzpatrick, have teamed up to roll out a new protocol, PubSubHubbub, to accelerate just about every major part of the Google sphere in which I play - from Google Reader shared items to FeedBurner, Blogger and today, Google Alerts.

If you thought Google Alerts was fast before, it's like Google went out and gave it an entirely new engine. Now, if I Google comes across a term I am tracking, I can expect to get near-instant updates saying it has been found. In a blog post today, Slatkin says its more than just about getting these terms faster and quicker, but also to help developers create tools and write Web applications that take advantage of this functionality. He writes, "Think of it as an AJAX search API that tells *you* when it finds new results. Acting upon these notifications your app could update your website, email friends, send an SMS -- the possibilities are endless."

Thus far, I've never really considered Google Alerts as a potential development platform, but as Slatkin suggests, the opportunity is now there to create an entire family of applications pointed at Alerts, much like others have pointed to the company's Maps product to make interesting mashups.

Anything that can help the Web get quicker, aid discovery, and enable even sharper apps is exciting, and I've been watching the developments with PubSubHubbub very closely. If I were a developer making a news discovery product based on topics (like Technorati or Lazyfeed, for example), I would check and see how I could tap into this real-time firehose for Google Alerts.

Google has been dinged, relative to Twitter and others, for not owning the real-time search race. But as the PubSubHubbub religion gets propagated, I think it is pretty clear where this is all headed. Not only will Google get this real-time space and lead again, but they are helping developers by enabling access to quality code and the best data faster than ever before.