Feed Me
When I hear people talking about how many feeds they subscribe to, I’m nearly always astounded by the amount. I’ve seen the number vary from 80 to 500. That’s just crazy. I admire any person who is able to give so much time to their feeds because they’re probably the most productive people on the earth.
I certainly don’t have enough time (sadly) to give even eighty blogs the time and attention they deserve. Because I don’t put any blog in my feed reader. I’ll add a blog in there if I really, really enjoy it and I get excited about a new post coming down the line. If not, then that blog probably just isn’t for me.
Right now I’m subscribed to twenty-eight feeds, I’ve done this by employing a couple of methods that allow me to sort through the noise and get not only the most important news – but also the best opinions in the blogosphere.
Subscribe to Aggregators
I don’t use a folder system in NetNewsWire, but if I did – the Apple folder would contain only three blogs. Daring Fireball and Nobody Wants A Stylus (which currently seems to have slowed down a bit unfortunately) are two of the blogs. What you’ll notice about these is that they both sift through all Apple and iPhone news leaving only the most relevant pieces.
To top that they also happen to offer some terrific opinion articles that I know a large amount of the Apple community values. The third blog I subscribe to in this category happens to be The Macalope – because he’s just plain funny and offers a sometimes very different insight into Apple’s habits.
I’ve been able to do this in a lot of areas, and if I didn’t subscribe to so many personal blogs (not that that’s a bad thing) I would probably be subscribed to a lot less feeds as that makes up a large percentage of what I read.
Visit the Big Boys
Who are the big boys? These are blogs that tend to relay interesting a relevant (in my opinion) news. So, you’ve got the classic examples such as Engadget and Autoblog. But the thing is, I don’t subscribe to them, instead I visit them using my web browser.
Why? Simply because I probably only read about ten percent of the posts that are written, thoroughly. Instead, I visit the site in question and skim through all the recent articles until I see a story title that I find interesting.
Blogs like these tend to post several new pieces a day and all that would do – if subscribed – would be clog up my feed reader and in the end stop me from using one all together.
Feeds are precious things. Sadly a good one is very hard to come by. Right now I’m looking for more: interesting, insightful and thought provoking weblogs.
For those interested, they can download a copy of my OPML file here (right click and save as) and if they have any suggestions for a new blog I should try out or want to share their OPML file – please leave a comment pointing it out.
I am subscribed to 29 feeds, a couple of which I’m thinking of removing! I am relatively new to using RSS feeds, a couple of months in google reader. I do miss visiting blogs like Autoblog and Engadget, which I used to visit multiple times daily.
I think reading the feeds is easier, and at school, we have a quota system, blocking us after we use 60mb of d/l in one day, so, feeds save me on all the random stuff I’m not interested in
Interesting post nonetheless
Thanks!
Charlie -
I’ve had 250 subscriptions at the most, but I recently cut down on a lot of them. I have yet to find a tipping point between too many feeds and not enough.
Here’s my OPML for reference: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/16897/John Rust Subscriptions.opml
Helo Jonathan,
I just count how many feeds are in my netvibes pages : 72 ! I’m quite impressed by the amount myself. I’m subscribe to these feeds because I selected them from a bigger amount of feeds. I’m often subscribing to more, and regurlarly deleting some others I’m no more interested in. The feeds I’m reading are delaing with quite dieeferent topics (from technologies, photography, railway traffic, developement…).
The big question underlying your post is : how can people read all these feeds ? My answer is : I can, and I don’t… I’m checking my netvibe page irregularly, and each time only focusing on one or two topica. For example, today, I’m focusing on friends sites and rss. I only have there 5 websites to check, leaving tech, develppement, photography feeds… Next time, I will go for another topic, when I don’t know.. only when I feel to get informations, not before.
I’m flattered to be mentioned in the same breath as Daring Fireball. Thanks for reading!
I was reading about 275 feeds (down from 425!) in NNW before I finally got overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. Engadget and the like are fun to read, but I have to treat them like a Twitter stream — don’t worry about trying to read everything, or even most things. Just look at ‘em occasionally to see if something catches my fancy.
I’m now only reading a half-dozen feeds, almost all from friends, on a regular basis. NNW is a great program that really shines when you’re trying to drink from the information firehose. It’s a bit overkill for light use.