痛别谷歌Reader

    山景城谷歌公司的人们一定知道，最大声的哀嚎将来自媒体——来自我们这帮为损失痛哭的新闻狂人。过去的五年中，谷歌定制的RSS阅读器的新闻搜寻速度惊人，无人能及。

    而如今，从7月1日起，它将不复存在。

    我花一分钟用Reader收集的信息量就能充实我一天的生活，这一点至今仍然让我觉得不可思议。最了不起的是，它提供的内容都是我自己挑选的。正如我喜欢在Twitter上“发现”信息一样，我热爱打理自己的花园，在院子里放满我喜欢的内容。所以我的心情就跟Reddit网站上致力于改变这个决定的人们一样，也可以用Twitter的标签#拯救Google Reader、或者网上流行的恶搞视频《元首的愤怒》来形容（古老的人物因为这个古老的阅读平台而苏醒），还像Change.org上的请愿书一样：谷歌怎么可以一边说着“不作恶”，一边砍掉一个如此深受用户喜爱的产品呢？

    谷歌的解释简明扼要：“有两个简单的原因：其一，Google Reader的使用量已减少；其二，作为一家公司，我们正在将所有的精力投入到更少的产品上。我们认为，这样的专注度能够创造更好的用户体验。”

    这两点毫无疑问是真的，或者至少大约是真的。用户使用率可能确实降低了，但Reader的用户群是一帮网络达人：我们是网虫啊！

    与谷歌看重的社交媒体业务Google+相比，Reader带来了更多的网站流量。这很丢人，我这么说并不是因为我会非常怀念Google Reader，而是因为它确实是一个很出色的小型社交网络。注意小型这个词。尽管谷歌在2010年推出Google+时砍掉了大多数优秀的分享功能，Reader仍然是搜索新闻、同时通过Twitter、Facebook甚至邮件传播这些消息的最佳途径之一。

    罗伯•费什曼全面分析了Reader这项服务，还总结了它在社交网络中扮演的角色：“Facebook在保持平衡上做得很好，但是它过于偏向社交了。它的网络就像起伏不定的多头水仙，紧紧环绕着自身。Reader则以内容为支点，破土而出，同时扩展到所有部分。”

    此言不虚。

    Reader是一个平台，帮助那些特定的信息狂人收集信息，同时和其他狂人分享信息。然而就因为没有足够多的网虫来凸显Reader的价值，谷歌就把它关了。好吧。谷歌是一家巨型公司，它当然知道什么是更好的生财之道。

    我觉得，这个变化凸显了社交网络一个更大的问题。那些巨头（谷歌、Facebook）似乎不满足于提供小型的精彩杂耍——他们想要成为独霸天下的平台，成为能长出多头水仙的躯干。

    但是当我们包容万物时，为什么只能有一个社交网络，一个平台呢？（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    They must have known in Mountain View that the biggest howl would come from the press—all us news junkies, crying over our loss. For five years going there has been nothing better than Google's stripped-down RSS reader for plowing through story after story with astonishing speed.

    And now, come July 1st, it will be no more.

    The amount of information I gather on Reader in one-minute spurts, sprinkled throughout my day, still feels incredible. And best of all: the feeds are my own selection. As much as I love "discovering" content on Twitter, I adored tending my own garden, filling platform with feeds specific to my tastes. So my sentiments match those the Reddit thread dedicated to the shutdown, or the Twitter hashtag #savegooglereader, or the Hitler video (an old meme resuscitated for an old platform), or the Change.org petition: How can Google say 'don't be evil' and then kill off a product so beloved?

    Google's explanation is terse: "There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we're pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience."

    Both points are no doubt true. Or true-ish. Usage may have declined in sheer number of users, but Readers are a powerful bunch: We are nerds!

    Reader drives more traffic to websites than Google+, the social-media project Google seems focused on. This is a shame, and I'm not just saying that because I will miss Google Reader terribly, but because Reader was a brilliant little social network. Emphasis on little. Even though Google took away most of the neat sharing functions in 2010, when it rolled out Google+, it still was one of the best ways to find stories and pass them on: on Twitter, Facebook, or even email.

    In a comprehensive look at the service, Rob Fishman summed it Reader's role in the social web thusly: "Facebook may well achieve an equilibrium, but it is social to a fault; the network, like a heaving, many-headed Narcissus, rallies mostly around itself. Reader pivoted on the fulcrum of content, unearthed and spread in equal parts."

    That's it exactly.

    Reader was a space for a very specific type of information junkie to gather and share other bits of information with other junkies/nerds. So Google is shutting Reader down because there weren't enough nerds to make it worthwhile. Fine. Google is a massive company and no doubt sees better ways to make money.

    To my mind this speaks to a larger problem on the social web. The titans (Google, Facebook) don't seem content building smaller, more precious sideshows—they want to be the platform, the body to the many-headed Narcissus.

    But why does there have to be just one social network, one platform, when we contain multitudes?