Google Reader - following vs. reading the feed

Mahendra, who I will now be following, has written a great summary on using Google Reader. It was all familiar to me, but he cleared up a mystery for me ..

How I Live and Breathe Google Reader by @ScepticGeek

... Tip: By adding a person’s shared items to a folder in Reader, you can unfollow the person in Buzz if you wish, while continuing to see their Reader shares....

Aha! That explains it. Some of the people I most like to follow, like John Munro, had vanished from my Google Reader "Follow" section but their shared item feed remained in my GR Subscription section. I bet I accidentally clicked "unfollow" (surprisingly easy to do for me).

I just navigated to John's shared item feed as shown in GR and added him back to my follow section. (Oops! He's showing up as "08915834275668816438". Hope this gets fixed soon.)

Like Mahendra I'm abstaining from Buzz. Google Reader "People you follow" is much closer to what I want than Buzz.
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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)