Google has announced that Google Reader has begun adoption of the PubSubHubbub protocol for shared items. This is a simple, open, server-to-server web-hook based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol, as defined on this Google Code page.
Here’s a visual overview of what that means:
Google names FriendFeed specifically as a place that takes advantage of such pinging. If you have added your shared items to your FriendFeed account, you and your friends will see them there in real-time. This means they will appear in FriendFeed’s real-time search engine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H9TWzHzFCk
Adding the PubSubHubbub support was one of the famous 20% projects of a few Googlers. They cite the project as a contributor to making the web a faster place, which of course is a big initiative of Google these days.
