Are We Entering the Post-Reader Era?
March 24th, 2008 (2:00pm) Mike Gunderloy 13 Comments
We’re certainly fans of RSS (and Atom) feeds here at WWD; our own full content goes out, we’ve reviewed plenty of feed readers, and we recognize feeds as one of the underlying technologies that is driving plenty of innovation. But we also know that this firehose of information poses problems, notably the feel that you’re spending all your time reading feeds. Perhaps the time has come for the next generation of technologies to displace feeds, by giving us smarter ways to find the info we really need.
Social media pro Connie Reece points to this evolution in a recent post, “Feed Reader Down, Reading Up.” In it, she explains how a combination of Twitter, Instapaper, group feeds, and sites like Alltop have let her cut feed reader use and still connect with more blogs that she cares about. Notably she points out “if it’s truly important, I’ll come across it some place besides my feed reader.” How about you? Are you finding smarter ways to locate things, or are you just working harder at keeping your feeds under control?
13 Comments Post your own comment
Ellie says: March 24th, 2008 3:11pm
I don’t use any of the sites mentioned in the article (or anything similar), so I still use my feed reader with regularity. On average, I read 100 sites a day that I wouldn’t be able to read otherwise without a feed reader. :)
Karmadude says: March 24th, 2008 3:51pm
Keeping up with the feed reader can drive one nuts, there is just too much information out there. My approach has been to mark everything as read at the end of the day, even if I haven’t read it.
The way I see it, interesting new information is more important than skipped old information. With all the linking and relinking going on, chances are you will come across some of the good skipped info again in the future. When I get bored of the monotonous feed reader, then I usually scan the blogindex on my site.
rick gregory says: March 24th, 2008 5:02pm
Once again a reductive, zerosum approach. Some people will find her combination compelling. I’m fine with the 150 feeds I can scan in Google Reader. I’m sure other people will swear by Twitter or perhaps say that Netvibes or Techmeme is all they need.
People have varying information needs and different cognitive predilictions. Can we *please* get past the “ZOMG there’s something new! Everything old is doomed!” non-analysis? Please??
Jennifer says: March 24th, 2008 5:54pm
I don’t get Instapaper. Why would you use it if you use Google Reader? I just star items I want to read later.
Jim says: March 24th, 2008 6:11pm
For me, the most useful link in Reece’s post is the link to Instapaper. I’m constantly finding stuff outside of bloglines that I want to read later. Not only does this Instapaper hold onto these for me so I don’t crowd up my bookmarks sidebar, but it also creates a feed of my unread ‘read later’ items… which I’ve added to my bloglines subscriptions.
But Alltop? My eyes glaze over just looking at that thing.
chrisbrogan says: March 24th, 2008 6:55pm
I use Google Reader, and the reason I do, is because, as a web worker, I need a tool that is fast, robust, allows me to move quickly through information, and then parse that information out for future use.
With the keyboard commands, I can skim, dive deep, mark for later action, share with others, email with folks not using Google Reader, and flush what’s not worth reading.
If you’re just reading to stay current, those other ideas work. But if you’re out there looking for information with which to do business, Google Reader, a few clever Yahoo! Pipes meets Twitter searches, and FriendFeed are musts.
Chris says: March 24th, 2008 8:30pm
I still keep my feeds under control with netnewswire. It’s still the friendliest way to keep on top of my favorite sites.
I have added Instapaper to my arsenal though. It’s a nice addition rather than a replacement though -http://theweeklyreview.ca/2008/02/18/incorporating-instapaper/
fyc says: March 24th, 2008 10:39pm
Over the past two or three months, I’ve slowly managed to go from about 125 feeds in Google Reader to 37 just so that I can cope with all the items (because I don’t have enough time as it is for all those feeds). Besides that, I follow a couple of dozen bloggers on Twitter.
I’ve used Greader for a couple of years now and I’m sticking to it for the very reasons chrisbrogan outlined just above. Since I don’t have to deal with two thousand feed items (as I know some people do), it’s the laziest option for me.
Lawrence Salberg says: March 25th, 2008 3:35pm
Huh? Is she for real? If it’s truly important, it will come across her feed reader anyway??? Gee, I guess that all depends on what she considers important - and what type of feeds she reads and how many she subscribes to.
Quite honestly, I’m not sure my current 70 feeds would cover another 9/11 - not because it wasn’t important, but because it wasn’t relevant or topical to most of what I read.
Oddly, a lot of what we DO read on our feed readers isn’t “important”. Which is why we read it. It’s interesting (sometimes), or curious, provoking, etc. Hardly would I use the word “important” to describe much of what I read.
Reece makes it sound like just glancing at the front page of USA Today at your local 7-Eleven is sufficient to stay informed of “important” events. Mindless. If that is what she used her feed-reader for, she was missing the whole point all along.
And if she is somehow equating Twitter as being ‘information’ that points out ‘important’ stuff to her, she’s a geeked out chic if there ever was one. There has yet to be a single important anything ever mentioned on all of Twitterdom. What can you say that is important in 140 characters? “Turn on the TV. We’re under attack!”?? That’s about it, I think.
The key to making sure your feed reader is real and useful is to make sure it is loaded with quality original services that don’t overlap. Mix a little pop-info in there if you must, but if you are seeing eleven posts about basically the same news story, you are abusing your reader - so don’t blame the feed reader, blame the user.
Michael says: March 27th, 2008 11:20am
More an more I’m using RSS feeds from places like Digg and Techmeme that aggregate important content, this way I don’t have to follow as many feeds because the small amount of RSS feeds that I do follow will give me most of the news and all of what slips through the cracks I pick up with one of the news aggregators. RSS feeds aren’t dead, mostly because it’s still the best way to pull content from many news sources and display it in a way that you can digest quickly.
engtech says: March 28th, 2008 11:12am
My new approach: Google Reader for my “must read” and then Friend Feed for everything else.
I have a couple of other aggregators for speciality topics, but I find it isn’t necessary to follow as many feeds. Use other people as your feed filter.
DC Crowley says: March 29th, 2008 9:00am
instapaper is funny. I have been using del.icio.us for something similar for the last 3 years. When I see something I tag it as usual and give it either a ‘to-blog’ tag or a ‘todo’ tag. I use google homepage more than reader now. I use reader when I have time (usually with gears on the bus home). Google homepage is great.Techmeme, rssmeme, rww, techcrunch, hacker news and my really sneaky one -> aide rss. I stuck all my feeds (opml file) in and subscribed to the best of… the community sorts it for me :D It’s fairly good, not perfect.
shaun mclane says: March 30th, 2008 9:19pm
I’ve just moved FriendFeed to my homepage, and get a ton of info from there. I also have started checking popurls for the hot items. I’ve seen a serious drop in my feed reading, with the exception of tuaw, engadget mobile, and of course, WWD. :-)