Too many feeds and not enough time

Posted Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 10:59pm in Blogging  | 

There comes a time in your blogging life when you have to evaluate the time and effort you put in to your blog and blogging endeavours. Over time the number of RSS feeds that end up in your aggregator seem to accumulate rapidly, and before you know it, you’re overwhelmed and inundated. You fire up your aggregator and suddenly there’s 000s of unread feeds screaming, “Read me! Read me!”. When that begins to happen, you know you’ve got to take action.

What is needed is a good feed clean out; a fresh start, or an online version of feng shui if you will. Get rid of those nagging feeds that haven’t been read for weeks. Take the time to go through each individually and say to yourself, “Do I really need you? Would I miss you if you’re not there?”. I can guarantee there will be a number of feeds just lying dormant in your aggregator; all lifeless and dead like.

I’ve decided to do just this today and I feel better for it, starting with the A listers more well known bloggers. Reasons why? I don’t find their content interesting to me personally. I’ve been subscribed to a lot of high-profile bloggers’ blogs for some time now and very rarely, if ever, do I take interest in their posts. Nothing personal, no jealousy involved, just don’t find them entertaining, stimulating or interesting.

Another thing I’ve banished from my aggregator is tag feeds from del.icio.us and Technorati. I was subscribed to a number of key words from each but have decided to rid myself from them for no other reason than I simply can’t keep up. Well, I might have kept one or two of the del.icio.us feeds - they’re just too good! :)

Interesting though, I can’t do without my PR blog feeds. No, no, no! In fact, my PR blog folder makes up the majority of my subscriptions and it seems to grow every day. Even writing this post, I quickly scanned my feeds, found this new PR blog from Bite via Drew B and subscribed. Doh! Not too sure on the name though. Reminds me of an old Australian soap opera for some reason.

My final pet peeve about subscribing to too many feeds is the shock I got when I received my phone bill through the post today. I have a Windows Smartphone and use the mobile Internet Explorer to access my feeds via Bloglines Mobile. The data charges were nearly on par with my talk time charges! Nuff said!

One thing that is apparent - well to me anyway - is if I’ve communicated with a blogger either in the real world, phone or by email, I tend to pay more attention of their blog. I think it’s something to do with establishing a connection or some sort of relationship with that person outside of the blogosphere?

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9 Comments

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Cory

Thursday, February 23, 2006 at 1:30am

Too funny, this is exactly what I’m doing right now. As far as I’m concerned, if a feed has 30 or 40 entries whose titles or excerpts I’ve never even looked at, I probably won’t get to them a month from now.

Same thing goes for bookmarks, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. Ok, maybe not phone numbers, but I find my day-to-day tasks are easier to deal with when I’m not surrounded by informational noise.

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Serge Cornelus

Thursday, February 23, 2006 at 8:42am

Very recognisable, Stephen. It took me, a newbie to the blogosphere, only a couple of weeks to notice that this RSS feed thing is great but can also be simply tooooo much (or maybe I don’t have the stamina to keep trying for as long as you have). Glad to see you’ve come back down to earth as well :-D. Just kidding. Still: the idea of being able to manage the massive stream of information is nonsense. Serendipity is the new word. If something is supposed to come your way, it will. Now I am sounding like I should get back down to earth, no?

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Antony

Thursday, February 23, 2006 at 9:39am

I know what you mean. It takes real discipline to keep feeds in order.

I use a system of priority folders and meercilessly deleting feeds if they aren’t useful.

The fact of the matter is that the really good stuff will come through to you via a handful of blogs anyway - that’s how memes work.

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Glenn

Thursday, February 23, 2006 at 1:51pm

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now but haven’t gotten around too it. This post inspired me to have a blogline refresh. Thanks.

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David Jones

Friday, February 24, 2006 at 12:11am

Admirable…I’ve culled the herd once already, but I’m considering a hard reset. Do you use the blogdigger PR headlines feed? I find I look at that more than anything else…and have considered dumping a lot of my lesser-read PR blogs from my bloglines. Surprisingly, I find I read John Wagner’s blog a lot, but I’m not subscribed. I just end up there when scrolling through the blogddigger list.

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Stephen

Friday, February 24, 2006 at 12:20am

David, I’ve never used the Bloggdigger feed but I’ve took a leaf out of your book and added it. Mind you, it’s only on trial for the time being! Gotta keep them subscriptions down!

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Piaras Kelly

Friday, February 24, 2006 at 10:58pm

It seems to be a case of one step forward and then two steps back, rather than the other way around when it comes to new feeds for me also.

I seem to be dropping a subscription every week now.

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Stephen

Friday, February 24, 2006 at 11:06pm

“It seems to be a case of one step forward and then two steps back, rather than the other way around when it comes to new feeds for me also.”

Couldn’t agree more! Although, I am beginning to be familiar with my subscriptions - what type of content I like - what I don’t etc.

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