A couple days ago Google Reader took an important step in making the app more social – they linked it up with your Google Talk (or Chat in Gmail) contacts so that you can see what items they are publicly sharing more easily and vice versa.

If you now go into your settings in Google Reader, you will see a ‘Friends’ tab. Here you will find your Google Profile (being used more and more by Google apps – more on that below) and below that will be a list of your friends who can see your shared items with the option to hide it from them. Below that is a list of other friends you have in our contacts with the option to invite them to join Google Reader so they too can easily see your shared items.

Google Reader is my single most-used app beyond email. However looking at my friends from my contact list who are also on Google Reader, it appears only a few are sharing items. I definitely believe this social Google Reader can be very powerful if networked together correctly – potentially even much more powerful than Digg and the like. Lets start using these Google Profiles and get sharing with each other!

…on a pat-myself-on-the-back sidenote I would like to point out that I pretty much nailed what Google appears to be doing now with connecting all their apps via these profiles – back in January I wrote:

I foresee a user profile page where one user can see another user’s starred or shared Google Reader data (essentially a Digg). Maybe they note next to that starred or shared link how many other people or times its been starred or shared and a link to all those who did. Maybe they have comments on the shared links… Maybe they make a front page where all the most popular links are collected and showcased…

Now we just need a sitewide shared statistics page…

[via Steve Rubel Tweet]

[UPDATE]: Google definitely needs to make it easier to add friends. As far as I can tell there is no manual way to do so, they simply look to see who you’ve had multiple email conversations with and automatically add those people – which means that if you haven’t had an email conversation with someone, or as in my case use a different email for most of your communication with someone, they won’t be on your list. Lets fix this Google.

[UPDATE 2]: Robert Scoble, who has been able to get his friends feature working with dozens of friends notes another problem: duplicates. That’s a good point, I wonder if Google can filter out duplicates somehow lest we all start reading the same things over and over and over.

[UPDATE 3]: As I noted, here’s Google Profiles. “Use multiple Google products? Soon your Google Profile will link up with these as well.”