Struggle, Triumph, and @mikesansone

I immediately disconnected the link, and because (sadly) I rarely use Friendfeed anymore, I was left without a convenient way to push my Google Reader shares to Twitter.Over the next month I searched a little and tried a few options to reconfigure my share stream.

I tried to configure Google Reader’s built in share tool, highlighted in a Louis Gray (@louisgray) article, but I could never get the feed to take in Twitter. Bummer.

I thought about using TwitterFeed (@twfeed) but a simple search for it on Twitter yields a potent batch of unresolved issues and TwitterFeed support pushing users to file tickets. I don’t have time for that level of troubleshooting.

Then, a lightning bug blinked in my head. I’d seen someone else share content from their Google Reader, and even in a way that allowed me to notate it so that it didn’t look like I was trying to steal credit for something that wasn’t mine.

I only had to find that user out of the 1,200 or so that I followed at the time.

Then, as luck would have it, a day later on my first early A.M. stream view, while still wiping the sleep from my eyes, there it was:

Mr. Mike Sansone (@mikesansone), with his beautiful post about a Small Business Checklist… his “Sharing this [from my RSS:]” clarifyer and all… and the most wonderful little source I’d seen in a week: Google2Tweet. 

A quick search, a quick plug in of my Google Reader ID and API and wha-bam!

And that’s how Mike Sansone made my day without even trying. And if you one of those marketing geeks (like me) that love to test and model scenarios, you should really check out that Judd Apatow article. Dude goes through some measures to get the laughs out.

A last thought, I’d still like to have custom tracking on the shares I send to see what gets action and what doesn’t, but at this point I’m just happy to have something working.