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.

Sometimes, it doesn't seem all that long ago that I myself was in college. On other days, it seems like I am talking about somebody else, when looking back on my time at UC Berkeley. With my 10 year graduation anniversary having passed a few months ago, I found myself back on a college campus this afternoon, with the opportunity to speak to a roomful of students at San Francisco State University, focused on a rapidly changing world of Marketing. And what I encountered was a class of future-thinking young adults trying to grok a fast-changing world where social networks are potentially more impactful than traditional media outlets.

Invited to speak by the class' professor, Shari Weiss, I hoped to illustrate my dual role - both in terms of being a technology blogger, but also my real world decade of experience working in public relations and corporate marketing, and how, finally, these two worlds are colliding, as I help companies get a bigger voice in the social media space.


I Don't Go Too Long Without Mentioning Google Reader
The gulf between what was considered "new media" when I was at Cal and what is "new media" today for these students is tremendous.

As I recalled this afternoon, in 1998 I was excited to see my Journalism professor approach how the Internet was affecting reporting and publishing, only to see my excitement dashed when she rolled in a projector and showed us a feel-good documentary on the founding of Yahoo!, featuring Jerry Yang and David Filo. My disappointment in the lack of forethought in this course was so great that I did not attend lecture the remainder of the year, dropping in only on discussion sections and for the final, which I somehow passed.


Initial Feedback on the Discussion Looks Pretty Good
In contrast, the array of topics challenging the students at San Francisco State brought a smile to my face. In quick presentations, teams tried to tackle the future of advertising, the world of Facebook applications, how to utilize Twitter for business, and I saw future topics spanning such sites as YouTube and LinkedIn.


I Swear I Could Have Talked For Hours On This Stuff
Some part of me was jealous, but I also felt a bit like an unofficial teacher's assistant, sitting in on the presentations, and trying not to correct small mistakes or provide answers. It was clear, that for the most part, the students see real potential from these new networks, where others of us are just coming up to speed. As I showed them, you don't have to be a traditional cool company selling to consumers to get new media. But it's becoming a requirement, to act and engage with your customers as peers. That the future marketers and message-shapers of the world are already getting the message bodes well.

I was glad to get the opportunity to drive up to The City and share my position on the changes I have seen, and hope I was able to make an impact. Thanks to Shari for inviting me.

While at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas this spring, I tried to make myself available to not only attend as many panels as I could, but also to participate in video interviews for those who wanted to talk about blogging, tech, social media and lifestreaming. While I already got the chance to publish the one on one discussion I did with Morgan Brown a while back as part of his "100 interviews" program, another video, from AustinLifestyles, had lagged, making me wonder if it would ever show.

But today, I found it had, indeed, published. The video, taped in two parts, is embedded below, via YouTube, and shown back to back. It's already interesting to see how my answers might be a little different just four months later, especially when I hear myself saying Matthew and Sarah are only 8 1/2 months old. (They are now 13 months.)

Three years in technology can be an eternity. I marvel that just over three years ago, I was telling you that "RSS Is a Demanding Mistress", showing off a screen capture of my NetNewswire application, powered by Newsgator. At the time, as I complained about having nearly 100 articles to read, I didn't anticipate the impact Google's entering the market with Google Reader would be, and my screenshot now seems quaint. By 2007, I had switched to Google Reader, and despite multiple assaults on Reader in the ensuing two years, you can tell most challengers apart by their epitaph.

In the past few years, I've helped champion more than a few new approaches to the RSS feed reader market, each with its own approach to making the stand-alone process more social. First there was Assetbar, who had tremendous technology, but a clunky interface, and never really got off the ground. Not too long afterward, we saw Shyftr debut, but following a highly visible controversy over shared comments on full feeds, the company eventually shut down their interesting product as well, moving instead to RSS filters. Even last week we saw NewsGator turn off their synching functionality, pointing customers to Google Reader. Yes, NetNewsWire is still around, and now points to Google Reader, but it's pretty much a legacy app at this point. (In my opinion, of course)


Isn't this cute? (From back in 2006 on NetNewsWire)
While some are debating RSS' role in a new world of real-time information discovery, there is no question that Google Reader has won this specific battle. If I exclude FriendFeed data from my own FeedBurner statistics, the combination of Google Reader and iGoogle accounts for 84 percent of all my RSS readers. In contrast, NewsGator is below 4 percent, and BlogLines checks in at just above 2 percent, with PostRank and Netvibes coming in at just over 1 percent each. Mice nuts.


My FeedBurner Stats Show Google Reader and FriendFeed Dominate
That's not to mean the RSS ecosystem is in anything resembling a freefall. The recent launches of My6sense for the iPhone, looking to find the most relevant content, and Lazyfeed for real-time blog search by topic, show me that not only is innovation alive and well, but blogs and RSS are key components in creating new products. And while Caleb Elston has been quiet of late, I am still using Toluu every day to share my OPML, and keep track of new blogs I am adding to Reader. Also, Feedly, which builds upon Google Reader with some very interesting social options, continues to plug away, gaining loyal fans.

But just think of what's happened over the last three years.

In 2006, folks like Jeremy Zawodny reported Bloglines' share at between 30 and 50 percent. Steve Rubel cited a Pheedo report showing Bloglines "slipping" from 37 percent to 30. Go back far enough, and you can see it even had the majority of the market way back in 2004, according to ReadwriteWeb.

By early 2007, Hitwise said that Bloglines had three times the market share of its nearest competitor, which was Rojo. Interestingly, that report mentioned Google Reader in passing, saying "as of the week ending 1/13/07, it had only 1/13 of the market share of visits of Bloglines." That's right. One thirteenth the share of Bloglines. I should mention that not everybody saw the gulf that wide, as others, including Bob Lee reported the two were in a practical dead heat the next month.

The last two years have been all about Google Reader, as the search leader and RSS distribution leader, through the acquisition of FeedBurner, also became the RSS consumption leader. Rojo disappeared in July of 2008, and Bloglines' own stumbles made it that much easier to switch, forcing Marshall Kirpatrick of ReadWriteWeb to say, "Do you really want Google to nail down complete dominance over the world of RSS? We sure don't."

The onetime debate about whether Google Reader is number one or not is pretty much gone, and Newsgator's turning off their online synching essentially throws in the towel. The once promising Feedeachother.com has turned off its lights. Shyftr and Assetbar aren't coming back. A new entrant called Fever is interesting, but looks more like My6sense than a traditional client. RSS is powering aggregation sites like FriendFeed, which in theory, provides 30 to 40 percent of my feed reader count, but when it comes to stand alone, all must stand in awe of Google Reader, for to do battle is futile.