Los Angeles — Having access to dozens of sources for the latest news events in the tech world right at your fingertips, and if you are an avid Google Reader user as well, you now have the reason to enjoy… The search titan, last week added some new personalization features to its Google Reader to help tailor content on its Web 2.0 feed more neatly, by tracking a user’s online habits, the company wrote in a blog post.
“We use algorithms to find top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions), collect them in the new Popular items section and order them by what we think you will like best,” explains Google’s Beverly Yang. “Now you do not have to be embarrassed about missing that hilarious video everyone is talking about — it should show up in your ‘Popular Items’ feed automatically.”
Google has also re-jigged its reader’s recommendations feature section by moving it under the newly added app’s Explore section. Google also given it a new name called “Recommended Sources”, but it still uses the Reader Trends and Web History features to pull a list of individually targeted feeds together.
Apart from adding the new Explore section, Google has also sprinkled a bit of, fairy dust on Reader by creating a sort option dubbed “Magic” that creepily re-orders items in the feed based on your personal usage and overall activity in Google Reader.
This feature can be accessed when you will either hover your cursor above a feed or folder. The great news here is that the feature actually gets better over time. The more you share or “like” stories, the better the sorting will become.
“Unlike the old ‘auto’ ranking, this new ranking is personalized for you, and gets better with time as we learn what you like best — the more you ‘like’ and ‘share’ stuff, the better your magic sort will be,” says Yang. “Give it a try on a high-volume feed folder or All items and see for yourself!”
It will be interesting to use Google’s new personalization features in Reader moving forward. And if you have not yet made yourself acquainted with the new features, give it a whirl and enjoy.