One of the neatest develops that has recently be released to the mobile-ready world is Google Currents which allows you to elegantly explore sites that you love in a beautiful and intuitive magazine-like fashion, available in Android and iOS devices.
If you haven’t tried it out yet you must – it’s simply brilliant and beautifully designed, and you too can be featured and published on their platform for free!
Culture is headed in such a direction where more and more people are consuming your content on mobile devices and if you’re interested in serving that growing niche and marketplace than becoming a Google Currents Producer should be on top of your list of things to at least attempt and try – especially since it’s free and won’t cost you a thing.
[tentblogger-youtube 5LOcUkm8m9w]
It took me 5 minutes. Literally. Check out my TentBlogger Google Currents Edition here for proof!
Check it out in this easy-to-follow (and brief) tutorial:
1. Get Started, Create New Edition
The first thing to do is to sign in and sign up for Google Currents Producer. It takes just a second and you’ll be in quickly.
The next thing is to create your first “edition” of your publication or blog. Just fill out the required info, like so:
Easy. Just fill it in!
The RSS feed that I use is my Feedburner address so that I can also track subscriptions through there as well. I think this is both strategic and very practical.
2. Setup Options, Features
The next step is to begin to fill out all the options and features that you have available to you. This includes the name, the description, the right industry, and graphics to go along with it:
Options to configure.
Make sure to get the right Google Analytics in there too!
3. Edit Sections
The next part is to customize your sections and design. For starters I just change the “Section Name” and leave the “Content Source” directly from feed. I don’t see value, at this point, in crawling for additional content that I may not completely control:
Leave most of these the same, for now.
You won’t have to edit any of these now but the design customization options are a nice touch!
4. Preview, Distribute and Publish!
The final thing you have to do (wow, that was quick!) is to preview, distribute and publish it!
They have a live preview for you to view in real-time but you can also view it as a popup as well:
Just verify ownership and you’ll have a direct link to your new Google Currents Edition!
Incredible!
You can view my Google Currents Publication right here!
They even have a dedicated landing page for you:
Make sure to copy this link and share it with everyone you know!
5. Test, Test, Test!
The final things for you to do is to test that it is, in fact, up in the library and that you can view it nicely.
I did a quick search for “TentBlogger” and there it was, instantly!
There she is...!
I subscribed and took a look – here’s what I saw:
Oh yeah. Installed.
Among the "greats"...!
Ah yah!
So pretty!
Everything is working, even images!
Wow, that was incredibly easy and stunningly-beautiful!
Again, you can do this in just a few minutes of time and then begin distributing it!
6. BONUS: Add Twitter Feed!
Interested in knowing a sweet trick to add your Twitter Feed as a section in your sweet Edition? Just do exactly the same thing as you did for the first except when you choose the RSS or atom feed put in this code:
1 | https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=TWITTER_USERNAME_HERE |
Twitter used to have an easy RSS subscribe feature but they ditched that apparently. Just use their public API instead!
Sneaky... but works!
Done and done. Enjoy!
Let me know when you’ve completed it and share your link in the comments! I want to see your Editions!
wow, that is soo cool. I have dived in and have started drafting in the current.
arrgg, that was my 2nd word. my first was palooka.
Currents is not an app available in my country yet. whyyyyyyyyyyy
ahhhhhhhh!
Dude, this is pretty cool! BibleDude.net is now set up in Currents!
But now when I try to add TentBlogger I only seem to be finding the feeds you’ve added, and not the actual channel. In fact, the RSS feed is even using the the Guy Kawasaki image as the icon. Not seeing the cool John cartoon image at all…
sweet…!
i think it’s refreshing.
Awesome information! Will be setting up a current for my site shortly.
did you do it?
Thanks for the info, looks awesome. I have a question though. Do you know how to upload a file in WordPress.com to verify ownership?
Is it only available through self-hosting?
yeah. just self-hosting.
I just set up the church thought and it was far too easy.
Here is my question for you… I do a thing on twitter where I post three articles each afternoon that would be a great addition to currents, but I am trying to figure out how to get them into currents without looking silly. I used an rss feed of the search for the hashtag #3at3 but that just does the tweet… it doesn’t pick up the web address in the link.
Any suggestions outside of manually entering them?
hmm. i have no idea. i would have to look into this.
Okay, once again I am a computer moron amongst… not morons. I have now spent 20 minutes messing with this. I have a lovely Google Currents set up. That is completely blank. I have now deleted. May try again after I bang my head on bricks for 20 minutes.
(30 minutes later…. still somewhat banging my head…) Now I can get Twitter and YouTube to show up, but my blog is still completely blank. Annoying. And I’m using feedburner — my URL is exactly like yours, except of course for the username. Do you have any suggestions?
hmm. screen shot?
I don’t see Google Currents a viable Reader yet. It is even trying to compete with Google Reader which I use everyday. But the post is I must say very cool…
it’s for those that enjoy mobile reading more i’d say… and the simple look.
Just saw this mentioned on another blog as well so of course I gave it a shot. Definitely a cool idea from Google that has some potential to it.
i think so. i’m digging it.
Hey I’m up, but no pictures. What gives? Search Current for ‘On Target Coaching’
I changed to feed options to ‘Generate articles by crawling source URL’ and I get pictures, but now my internal links are gone. Geez. Any ideas?
hmm. hows your feed health? you use feedburner?
yep, Feedburner. I suspect could be issues there. Not sure I’m going to ‘republish’ each week until I see this going to be viable use of time and readers.
let me know how its’ going.
Hi there, I completed all the steps and got to the end to test and publish and google publisher is not avail to download for Australia yet. Annoying!!!
ahhh!
Hi John,
Does doing this help in any kind of SEO too?
-Vineet Saxena
i don’t think so.. not at this point.
And can you please tell me how to get this “Share” column on the left of this content box which keeps on scrolling down with the page?
Thanks..
-Vineet Saxena
This is just a guess, but since John has been involved with marketing his Standard Theme, I would guess it’s a part of that. It’s a sweet share bar.
I use Slick Social Share: http://www.designchemical.com/blog/index.php/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-plugin-slick-social-share-buttons/
http://standardtheme.com … it’s built right in.
Hi John, I found your tutorial to be easy to follow and I only had one problem. My twitter feed did not set up correctly (I am still trying to figure out why). Otherwise it is all good. Thanks for helping me.
http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAowvoo5/walk_simply
Thanks for this John! Here’s my result: http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAowx445/dustntv
I didn’t give this much thought the day it was announced. I’m so glad you put it into perspective for me! I love it! Although, I’m very torn… I love me some FLUD, and I really like Feedly too… but I may have to stick with Currents as my primary reading platform.
sweet! i’m going to subcribe!
Here is mine:)
http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAowh4w3/zio%C5%82owy_zak%C4%85tek
awesome!
Hmmm, I entered the Twitter api and now google wants me to verify ownership. Since I can’t upload their HTML file or otherwise access Twitters site, I’m not sure how to verify.
Did you have to do it? What did you do?
Here’s something else that’s odd. I added my Tumblr RSS to the feed. Google wants me to verify that as well. I went ahead and published anyway, and it appears on their simulation screen anyway. (The box for My Tweets, however, is blank).
Maybe a few bugs in the system?
All right, last thing. Just clicked on the iPhone simulator, and there are My Tweets! (I don’t have any of these electronic doo-dads, so I’ll have to ask a friend to independently check. YMMV!
whoot! you persevered… and won.
Hmmm… This is a great idea, I’ll definitely be sorting my photography site for Google currents… Just tried to access some google currents on my iPad 2, but they don’t work. Just jumps to iTunes then nothing. In the UK so wonder if it’s just not ready yet! I’ll report back when I get it working.
please let us know!
Got my Blog up and Running on Google Currents. Thanks for the awesome tips.
sure thing umair!
To help smaller publishers promote their editions we created http://www.currentsdirectory.com – it’s still very new but give it a shot and give us some feedback.
hmm. i’ll check it out.
Thanks for the RWW shout out
bad link. you write for them now?
John, thanks for this pointer. Here’s my link: http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAow0_o6/give_them_gospel
awesome! well done!
Thanks for the pointers! Here’s my link: http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAow-4A7/entreprelife
The only issue I have is with Twitter. I can’t verify twitter and so far, it isn’t showing my tweets. Not sure what I’m suppose to do.
It seems to be working now? Lol.
sweet! rocking.
Thank you for the how-to! So cool.
I have to work out the kinks of getting verified, but still awesome.
sweet! enjoy!
I should be all set now… thanks!
{LIFE by Ashley Pichea}
Thanks for the info. Alltopstartups.com is now published on Google Currents.
great job bro!
Here is my link http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAow5KZG/fastpitch_softball_tv
I have an issue with Twitter. I can’t verify twitter and so far, it isn’t showing my tweets. Not sure what I’m suppose to do.
I also have an issue with subscribes. I have watched about 10 iphone users sign up and they never count towards a new subscriber, but every android subscriber counts. Has anyone else had this issue?
it might take some time. i know i’ve seen some people have similar issues.
Thanks John. It worked great. Here is my link:
http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAowqYNb/captivatingcappadociacom
I wanted to comment that I tried to stumble the post by hitting the SU button on the left side. It opened the dialogue box, I filled it in and clicked and it said “non-fatal error” – something wrong with the address which is automatically entered. I don’t know what I did wrong. In case it was not me, I wanted to let you know.
interesting. i’ll check it out.
For me, it doesn’t show my the contenets of my site properly. No pics, and just excerpt. Its nothing like this for other website on Google Current. Can you help?
Great post, thanks for sharing. I will start the registration process now
I’ve been dabbling with Google Currents but find it’s difficult to get subscribers. I do, however, have it going strong with postings from my site.
I’m afraid I’m simply not tech savvy enough to add my Twitter feed, though I would dearly love to do so.
My edition can be found at; https://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAow76eqAQ/exploration_travel_magazine
Hey John, thank you very much for this article. Very well done. 5 Stars for you. I set up my account and everything went fine. Check out Writeca.com Google current edition here:
http://goo.gl/mag/DVPSPPr