Google announced today on their Reader blog that new changes will be coming to the oft-neglected RSS feed service. The first of the major changes is that Google Reader will be receiving the major facelift that all other Google products have received. In addition, Google announced that Reader and Google+ will be getting better integration, so that you can share your feeds with circles on Google+.
Now for the bad news for die hard Google Reader users. Google will be killing off the social features already present in Google Reader, as Google feels as though they’ll be redunant since the features are already present in Google+. This is Google’s way of making sure you integrate your life into Google+ and the way the two services are integrated will help with that.
Google also understands that the new changes are not for everyone, so they’re making it easy to get your data out should you want to move to another service. The export feature will allow you to take everything with you, including:
– Your subscriptions
– Your likes
– Your starred items
– Your shared items
– Your friends
The New Google Reader will still allow you to share your feeds, but the catalyst for sharing these items will be the Google+ interface.