Here are a few simple facts: some people talk more than others. Also, some people are more interesting than others. And a new Google Reader feature called “Friends trends” may help you determine how the folks you interact with online score in both of these categories.
Friends trends will allow you to sort your pals according to either popularity or how active they are. Then, you can look at how many items they share per day, along with what percentage of those items you actually read.
With this info, it should become apparent which of your friends are sources of valuable information, and which are the RSS equivalent of those annoying individuals who are obsessed with chain emails. Assuming you don’t already know.
Interesting, right? And other, perhaps more useful, Google Reader upgrades have arrived, too. A post on the Google Reader Blog explains, “[W]e’re continuing to iterate on our comments feature. With this release, comments are now available to our non-English users. Additionally, item sources are now visible in the comment view and it’s easier to mark items as read there.”
And finally, “We’ve also made improvements to our mobile interface. You can now post notes if an interesting thought occurs to you while waiting in line. For those of you with Android phones, we’ve also fixed a particularly annoying bug that led to items not being marked as read correctly.”
