Do you use Google Reader? I started out using FeedDemon as my RSS aggregater. later on I went to Bloglines. For a while now I have been using Google reader. I really liked Bloglines but for some reason I felt that It would be in my best interest to switch over to Google. So far Google Reader has been "OK", but I noticed something a few days ago when I logged in. I got a message telling me that the feeds I was subscribed to will be shared with my friends. Actually it was a message asking me if I wanted to add some friends to the list of friends that my feeds are already being shared with. My first thoughts?

I don’t want the feeds I’m subscribed to shared with my friends.

Who are my friends? Well its not like Facebook or Myspace, where people that are my friends are people that I have invited or approved. Everyone in my Gmail address book are considered my friends in Google Reader. Theres no approval, theres no invites. Everyone in my contacts are now able to view my subscribed feeds.

To be honest, its not that big a deal, my list of feeds are pretty standard. A bunch of tech and gadget related websites and blogs. But I just didn’t like the idea of not having an option when it comes to who I share my feeds. It looks like its all or nothing.

I then went to my public page and it was empty. None of my feeds were being shared. That made it even less of a deal than I thought. It looks like when you subscribe to feeds in Google Reader, you have the option of making that feed public (shared) or private. You can also share individual post, or items within a feed. You can even share individual items within the feed. There are plenty of options, just not enough options as to who you share with.

Why does that matter?

This isn’t anything that I have to worry about, but think about this example. Lets say you have a blog, and the topic of your blog is a very specific, niche topic. You live and die by having good info and breaking stories. You have a couple of competitors, all of whom you occasionally communicate with through Gmail on different things. Your subscribed feeds is a portion of your research and information gathering method, how you sometimes find out about things to blog about. Now that method is shared with all of your competitors. Sounds trivial but it is something that some bloggers have to deal with.