How To: Subscribe to Google+ Users with Google Reader

If you're like me, you don't do a lot of web browsing anymore. I subscribe to my favorite blogs' feeds and read them via Google Reader. It's one of my favorite Google products, for a lot of reasons. I can keep up with most of my web activities in one tab, and follow along with my favorite blogs, Flickr photos, and Twitter. I can share instantly with people who follow me, and see what other people have shared with me. I hope that Google+ will integrate well with Google Reader, because it already does so many things well. 

Since Google+ is still a bit of a closed system, it's difficult to share items from Google+ to people outside of it. It's also not easy to share Google Reader items to Google+. When you click the "Share" button on Google Reader, it automatically shares to Google Buzz. You can also use the "Send to" button, and send a post to Blogger, Delicious, Facebook, or Twitter, but not Google+.

(Note: I did discover that in the mobile version of Google Reader, you can share to Google+.)

Let's say you want to streamline your Google+ feeds a bit, and take some people out of your circles and follow them on Google Reader instead. 

Create a Feed with PlusFeed

PlusFeed is an unofficial site for Google+ user feeds. Creating a feed is pretty simple. I'll use my own feed as an example:

1. Open up your Google+ profile. (Or find the person you want to get a feed of.)
2. Click on the profile name: https://plus.google.com/117751549758275478700/posts
3. Copy the number after plus.google.com—i.e., 117751549758275478700
4. Add it to http://plusfeed.appspot.com/—i.e., http://plusfeed.appspot.com/117751549758275478700.
5. Check out your new feed:

6.  Use the menu to "Subscribe to this feed using" and select your application of choice.  

Notes

• All feeds are for public posts only.
• You may have discovered that you can find a person on Google Reader, and it'll return a feed that looks like it's linking to their Google+ profile. In actuality, it's linking to their Google Buzz feed.
• If you choose to follow people on Google Reader instead of Google+, you will miss out on the comment threads.