Thanks to a commenter from the Google Reader Team on our last post for clarifying the shared item change which won’t be a change afterall!

Costa is correct, this is just about what Chris is sharing. He’s no longer sharing his starred items, the post was just an indicators for those that subscribed to that to instead switch to his regular shared items (sharing in Reader predates the “Share” icon, initially all you could share were existing tags or your starred items). The Reader model isn’t changing at all.

Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer

I’m still personally confused by starred items.  I mean, I star them, but I don’t do anything with them.  Mihai, any ideas on the usage, or if it has a lot of traction?

_drew