Get Current(s)

posted by DL Byron on December 11, 2011

Currents

As an independent publisher of blogs and media, I’m very enthused about Google Currents? Cause it saved me like 80 grand! Bike Hugger is already available in mobile views for browsers and I haven’t been able to justify an app. What Google has done with Currents is make an app dashboard. I tell Currents what feeds to parse and then can curate those feeds manually, or with tags, and upload featured content too.

500 channels

The Web today is like cable with 500 channels. Bike Hugger is on

• Blog (s)
• Twitter
• Tumblr
• Facebook
• Flickr
• G+ me and a page
• PicasaWeb
• Tumblr
• Kindle
• Newsreaders
• Pinterest
• Podcast
• Email
• Content scraping sites

and then wherever a reader may want to read us on apps like Flipboard, Readability, and Instapaper. Talk about a content strategy! Where I’m challenged is to not just replicate the content from one channel to the next and consider what I’m sending where. For Currents, I’ve plugged in feeds for the blog, photos from G+, YouTube, and will feature content from my travels and events like Built and our Mobile Socials. Considering how easy it is to browse and view videos with Currents, I’ll also get back to more videos in 12.

Earlier this week, Zeldman said

Little tip. People don’t want apps to look and work more like websites. They want websites to look and work more like apps.

Zeldman is viewing the web through web agency-tinted glasses. I disagree with him and replied, “It doesn’t matter what people want, it’s where they’re going to get their content,” and that’s everywhere, anytime, and blazing fast. Is it better to spend your time and budget on a beautiful new site that looks like an app or pump out the content? Obviously, from my blog-publisher glasses, “Content is like location in real estate.” You’ve got to be where the people are and they’re all over the place online. That’s why I’ve been writing about mobile so much this Fall and Winter.

Google has posted an unusually helpful help site about Currents with these quotes.

Google Currents producer is a production environment whose mission in life is to help publishers produce and monetize existing content — specifically for distribution via phones and tablets.

The producer makes it easy for you deliver the best possible, high-performance experience to your users, who are increasingly spending their time on smartphones and tablets.

It’s remarkably easy and time well spent for me.

Earlier this week, I was in SF for a Microsoft event with Joshua Allen, Nishant Kothary, et al. We saw a preview of the new Windows Store.

The point of that preview was to make MS relevant to mobile and app developers. A focus of the preso, besides the HTML5 whizbang, was how massive the Windows install is and how many potential eyeballs will see your app. It won’t be as easy as giving Google a feed to parse on Currents, but that’s another content location I can’t ignore.

Find Bike Hugger’s Currents edition here at this link.

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