March 18, 2013 at 21:17Why does Google think that users will like Google Currents instead of Google Reader?
Enough tears were shed , petitions were signed, unkind words were said about Google and alternatives were suggested after the news about the imminent closure of Google Reader.
Therefore, we will not repeat them, but pay attention to the message about closing. It says that Google is concentrating energy on fewer products, and that focusing will improve the quality of survivors:
What did the company concentrate on? On a thing called Google Currents!
For quite some time, I saw Currents ads in the main Play promotion on Android. But the description and screenshots somehow did not impress.
Then, Alla Zabrovskaya, the head of the PR-direction of the Russian Google, in answers to Roem.ru questions by March 8 mentioned that she uses Currents:
This fueled interest enough to put and watch the application.
In short, Currents is such a simpler and glossier Reader with a very limited selection of content. Or not limited, but recommended by Google. After installation, the user is immediately subscribed to the "top" publications, broken down into simple categories. Then the user can add other resources from the directory and remove uninteresting ones. News is presented in the form of "cards" familiar from Google Now. It looks beautiful, but when there are a lot of them, you can wipe a hole in the screen, because it will take a long time to flip non-compact (in comparison with the Google Reader headers) cards.
On the left is a menu with subscriptions. If you click on the group heading, the application displays beautiful pictures from subscriptions in full screen. But you can’t switch to specific news on them. For example, if you see a photo of Yuri Milner and want to find out what he is listening to there with headphones, then you will not succeed. Well, or you need to go to the Reuters feed and find among the unimaginable amount of news exactly the one about Milner. The task is not trivial, I tried (and found). When you click on a specific publication, you can go to its feed. Some tapes are then divided into sections.
For obvious reasons, there are few Russian publications and they work worse than foreign ones. If The Verge’s tape is all of attractive pictures and without technical flaws, then Kommersant’s things are not so beautiful, there are duplicates of the same news and the like.
But the funny thing is the description of the Currents application on Play (in Russian it is called Google Media):
There really is a subscription to feeds, although it works very badly. You can’t add completely new feeds, only those that you already read in Google Reader are available. New feed entries appear with a delay of several days. No grouping.
In general, how the Currents application makes a rather strange impression. From boredom in the queue, in the subway or in a traffic jam, you can, of course, bombard beautiful pictures and random news. But because of the too simple structure, it is difficult to plan work with a large amount of information in such an application.
At the same time, in the interface for "publishers", the publication setup wizard suggests first of all setting the RSS feed of articles (many screenshots here ). That is, you can certainly bury RSS / Atom, but they may not send a wreath from Google. Other content delivery options include a YouTube channel and manual article creation in HTML.
But what, in fact, was the reason for writing this material, is updating my Android version to 4.2.1 on my phone. After the update, Currents is installed by everyone as a system application that cannot be removed.
Close the long-running and beloved by many Reader in order to promote raw Currents by all means. How do you like this kind of focus?
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.
What did the company concentrate on? On a thing called Google Currents!
For quite some time, I saw Currents ads in the main Play promotion on Android. But the description and screenshots somehow did not impress.
Then, Alla Zabrovskaya, the head of the PR-direction of the Russian Google, in answers to Roem.ru questions by March 8 mentioned that she uses Currents:
I read articles from both Russian and foreign media in it. I like its interface - you can watch both specific publications and top news
This fueled interest enough to put and watch the application.
In short, Currents is such a simpler and glossier Reader with a very limited selection of content. Or not limited, but recommended by Google. After installation, the user is immediately subscribed to the "top" publications, broken down into simple categories. Then the user can add other resources from the directory and remove uninteresting ones. News is presented in the form of "cards" familiar from Google Now. It looks beautiful, but when there are a lot of them, you can wipe a hole in the screen, because it will take a long time to flip non-compact (in comparison with the Google Reader headers) cards.
On the left is a menu with subscriptions. If you click on the group heading, the application displays beautiful pictures from subscriptions in full screen. But you can’t switch to specific news on them. For example, if you see a photo of Yuri Milner and want to find out what he is listening to there with headphones, then you will not succeed. Well, or you need to go to the Reuters feed and find among the unimaginable amount of news exactly the one about Milner. The task is not trivial, I tried (and found). When you click on a specific publication, you can go to its feed. Some tapes are then divided into sections.
For obvious reasons, there are few Russian publications and they work worse than foreign ones. If The Verge’s tape is all of attractive pictures and without technical flaws, then Kommersant’s things are not so beautiful, there are duplicates of the same news and the like.
But the funny thing is the description of the Currents application on Play (in Russian it is called Google Media):
- Blogs and feeds. Combine all your Google Reader subscriptions, as well as your favorite blogs and feeds, into a beautiful collection that looks like a real magazine.
There really is a subscription to feeds, although it works very badly. You can’t add completely new feeds, only those that you already read in Google Reader are available. New feed entries appear with a delay of several days. No grouping.
In general, how the Currents application makes a rather strange impression. From boredom in the queue, in the subway or in a traffic jam, you can, of course, bombard beautiful pictures and random news. But because of the too simple structure, it is difficult to plan work with a large amount of information in such an application.
(I personally ( sinodov ) was generally interested in the approach to generating recommended content: the only thing I signed up for myself on Google Currents was Roem.ru feeds. It would be logical to expect something appropriate as recommendations, but no - Google advises reading Rap news Up. Necessarily and without fail)
At the same time, in the interface for "publishers", the publication setup wizard suggests first of all setting the RSS feed of articles (many screenshots here ). That is, you can certainly bury RSS / Atom, but they may not send a wreath from Google. Other content delivery options include a YouTube channel and manual article creation in HTML.
But what, in fact, was the reason for writing this material, is updating my Android version to 4.2.1 on my phone. After the update, Currents is installed by everyone as a system application that cannot be removed.
Close the long-running and beloved by many Reader in order to promote raw Currents by all means. How do you like this kind of focus?