Following And Google Reader

Having noted a couple downsides of the new Blogger community, Following, I have been intrigued to note that a number of bloggers are in agreement with me on one issue - Following interaction with Google Reader is a bit rough. Or was, for a while. The advice we get about Following, in this capability, is

following a blog will create a subscription to the blog in your Google Reader account.

That's a rather vague statement, and says nothing about what happens if a given blog is already in Google Readers, or what happens when you remove a Followed blog from your Reading List.

So, I decided to find out what happens.


Having accumulated a small number of interesting blogs in my Reading List, I clicked on the View in Google Reader link. I see all of my Followed blogs, plus a few others that I added some time ago.



The advice is

You can also hide followed blogs if you'd rather not see them in Reader.

Good advice, so now they aren't seen.



I click on the Manage Subscriptions link, and under Preferences, I see the checkbox "Show followed blogs from Blogger", and it's now unchecked.



With "Show followed blogs from Blogger" unchecked, my Reading List is a bit empty.



So I go back to Settings - Preferences, and re check "Show followed blogs from Blogger".



And now, I see my Followed blogs again.


So it looks like you have two possibilities - see all Followed blogs, or no Followed blogs. This is better than always seeing Followed blogs, but I hope it can be improved upon. For a start, how about "Don't duplicate blogs." - that doesn't sound so complicated, does it?

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