You're right that "closed" is far too strong of a word, since you can easily share outside of Google. But the new Reader is definitely not what it used to be i

You're right that "closed" is far too strong of a word, since you can easily share outside of Google. But the new Reader is definitely not what it used to be in the "open access" department. The old way: people who wanted to follow me added my Reader feed to their RSS reader. They use their RSS reader. The new way: I add G+ users who I think want to follow the things I share to my tech-related circle. They use G+. My target audience is limited and disempowered. I'll try it for a bit, but likely I'll ditch G+ for this use and find another RSS posting service. Google could fix it by adding "public circles" and RSS feeds of those circles.