Within the last twelve months I did a lot of research about social media, online communication and conversation measurement. To collect useful bits of information I wrote small paper notes, an approach I borrowed from the GTD method. The notes took thier place on the notice-board, reminding me on the relevant topics while I was surfing through the web of infite distraction. The close of the 2009 is near and it’s time for a wrap up. Yesterday I took the notes down and created a mindmap. Feel free to watch and comment the mindmap. Meanwhile I am sitting before an empty board, thinking about 2010 topics.

Google announced the shutdown of many experimental products that weren’t really generating any revenue: Notebook, Dodgeball, Catalog Search and Jaiku. Google Reader survived the “bloodbath”, like Mashable.com called it. The Question is: How to make money with Google Reader? Here is what I suggest:

A feed reader assistant

When you are following hundreds of feeds, there are a lot of informations you probably never want to read, because you are only interested in some of them. The oportunity of Google Reader: Provide a service, which automatically sets posts to read and only leave the relevant posts marked as unread.

How does it work?

Fist I have to point out, that an opt-in solution (like a spam-filter) won’t work for me. The reason is: Newsfeeds are about information I want to see. Usually I don’t know which information is relevant until I read the caption and the first lines. With opt-in any corresponding information will be bannend as soon as I checked it as unwanted, without really knowing whats going on. Thats not what I need, I want intelligent filters. An opt-out solution with user request would be much better, because it does only what I had determinded and known. I would interact with the system and control the flow of information manually.

Tweak the assistant

Now Google Reader has to know, which information is important for me. There is the classic RSS reader view. Each post has a button to set all similar posts as read. When I click on this button, a small window pops up and shows me the similar posts, each with caption and some lines of content. While this sounds to be something like a spam filter, it’s different: It’s not only about the words, its about the root of information too. With root of information I mean the original post and therefrom aggregated information. If I’m not interested in particular information, I’m not interested in informations gathering around it. That’s imporant when you are reading multiple feeds of one branch.

Intelligent sets

The advanced link from website content to feeds. The usability is similar to bookmarking services like delicious. Open a website, select important parts of the content with the mouse. Start the Google Reader plugin which automatically puts URL, page title and selected content into the form. Now there are some field for tags and categories plus a date picker to select a specific date or a period of time. Saving this file adds a ‘intelligent set’ into my Goodle Reader. The assistant now knows, which information is important for me. If posts match this criteria, the reader shows them as important.

The opportunities

A Google Reader with information assistant would be great! The real power comes from the intelligent sets: Imagine Google Reader showing information about other feeds and websites matching the criteria. Imagine Google Reader reminding me about specific information at a date I had selected, showing me todays feeds and websites matching the criteria. Think about automatic information updates after a period ot time. I would pay for this and I’m shure that a lot of people will do.