Is sharing caring?

While most online content consumers have perhaps grown accustomed to the stream of bookmarking options that appear under a number of online articles, the advent of Google's Shared Stuff may newly avail publishers of that space.

The function is the product of a mixture of social muses. Like most any social networking site, it boasts a profile page from which users can add friends, describe themselves, upload images (with notable ease from Google's Picasa) and share links.

It's in the latter functionality that the site sticks out. Users add the Shared Stuff bookmarklet to their toolbars, much like StumbleUpon. Then, when visiting a website of interest, they can bookmark and share it from their poison of choice: del.icio.us, Reddit, Digg, Furl or any other. In other words, Google does not try to replace or compete with any of these functions; it merely eases access to them.

Google Operating System speculates that over time, Google will likely allow users to add the "Share" button to websites, replacing the stream of icons - dubbed "Iconistan" by some - that publishers must implement to get their content disseminated on Digg, Facebook or other sites.