Because it's the 2nd most popular social network. It's ahead of Twitter without even taking Youtube into account, which you probably should :Y

I think G+ is misunderstood. It's not supposed to be a Facebook analogue. It's supposed to underpin and connect everything else we do on the net, and then connect that (conditionally) to everyone we know. And it does that really well (even in its current early form).

I also prefer its version of what is more traditionally 'social networking' over Facebook and Twitter's versions.

And... it's where I get my news and stuff from now. If I want to know what something is then I google it. If I want to know what's going on or how to use something or what people think of it or what is the best X for Y then I G+ it.

But yeah, it's more a layer under/over the web than a social network in the sense that FB is.

(I realise you were just making a joke and this response is overkill but yeah, that's me :Y )

Ok this article describes it as 'passive' social networking which is better than what I said.

FINE THEN.
You make it sound a lot more useful than Facebook.

GLAD WE AGREE.

Hard for anything to be less useful than facebook though. I think one of the best things about G+ is that all the shit people stayed on FB :Y

(Circle me on Google Plus, Sinky <3 )

(Or add me on VK (dance) )

I too go hnnnnnng at the news. I LIKE google reader. I like that its in-browser and all portable to apps and other computers with ease. I fear change! Well, I don't, but am sure they'll not make it easy to replace.

Yeah if I used it I'm sure I'd be bothered. It's just that I've never had a use for such a thing. If I want to check out what the websites I like are saying I visit them like some sort of fucking neanderthal :(

Also: http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/13/adblock-plus-removed-google-play-store/

As it says, I'm surprised it's not been done sooner.

Anyone with any slight understanding of Google will know that they make their money from Ads. So it makes sense for them to prevent apps that prevent ad views. Annoying but understandable.

I'm sort of surprised and not surprised. I wouldn't have been surprised if ad-blocking stuff was banned from the start. But to remove it at this point just looks bad.

Wonder whether Chrome's ad-blockers will follow.

Might want to have a look at this plus this.

I read an analogy of having to go and check everyone you know's outboxes in case they have sent you an email. RSS is/was great!

Yeah I am old fashioned. I actually like visiting all the sites.

(also there are very very few websites that I check regularly, which is probably a big part of why I've never used owt like Reader)

I do things with it also like having the last.fm gig listings for London feed on there, which is now really easy to skim through. And sites like I dunno Lifehacker which are at least 80% shite but have something interesting sometimes, it's nice and easy to zip through. I think I mainly use it as a skim reader actually.

Makes sense. I tend to just use sites which aggregate the kinda stuff I'm interested in.

I actually really like using G+.  I'm like Drew, I have a tech circle and get a bunch of news that way.  I could probably get most of it that way, and replace Reader with it, but there are a few sites that wouldn't work.

The OldReader site works almost exactly like Google Reader.  I've only used it for a day but so far it's as good IMO.  I just wish I didn't need to find another site to do it, I love Reader!

Edit: I think they are getting a lot of new users because it was pretty slow to load for me this morning.

There's a lot of things springing up today it looks like. Since we've got til July I'm gonna stick with G for now and let the dust settle, there's bound to be a couple of strong favourites after a while.

Bah, I use Google Reader a lot for keeping up on a lot of webcomics. *Checks...* About 60 of them in fact, plus a handful of blogs and stuff, some of which aren't updated regularly/consistently so having to check each website individually would be a ballache.

I'll probably find something else to use at some point, hopefully I can just export my subscriptions instead of re-adding them all manually.

Yeah it looks like loads of people either already do or very soon will import the subs and google already let you export.