Download Squad

Last month Drew Olanoff and Mashable's Adam Ostrow acquired ReadBurner from developer Alexander Marktl. This afternoon they're relaunching the site with a new look and a ton of new features.

ReadBurner is a meme tracker based on Google Reader shared items. We covered the site when it launched. At the time it was simply a repository for shared items from a handful of well known tech bloggers. Now the site features a much more elegant design, categories like Popular, Upcoming, and Most Recent, and subcategory links for All, Web, Desktop, Mobile, and Apple.

There 's also a related stories section that lets you know if other sites have picked up on story. This feature makes ReadBurner a bit more of a Techmeme competitor than it used to be. And ReadBurner has partnered with Disqus, an online comment system to let users comment on stories. The companies are looking into ways to also make those comments appear on the original blogs where the stories came from. Finally, the site now sports Google Reader integration. Just click the Google Reader tab and your RSS reader will open up on the same page.

While we're dubious that this will be a true Techmeme or Digg killer, it does look like a good way for casual readers to find tech related news. Since the site relies on users who share their Google Reader link blogs, it's possible users could start spamming the site when it goes live. But as long as the site is well managed and someone takes care to prune spammy feeds you should see stories from a more diverse set of readers showing up soon.