What is your RSS feed management strategy?
September 10, 2007 – 10:45 am
Its Monday morning and I’m trying to wrangle in my growing list of RSS feeds. For the most part, I’ve converted my newsletters to RSS subscriptions, but there are several I still subscribe to via e-mail.
How many RSS feeds do you monitor? Currently, I monitor about 125, but I had about 3,000 posts I hadn’t read until my bulk sweep over the weekend.
What is the sweet spot for staying informed but not overwhelmed?
My new strategy is to review my list once a week for posts I haven’t read yet and run a bulk delete of posts (but keeping the feed subscription).
I figure that if I do this on a weekly basis I will develop a better feel for which feeds hold my interest so I can focus my time on that content and unsubscribe from the others. This will also help me keep on top of them.
Whether e-mail or RSS, it seems like a subscription review every 6 months or so is necessary to keep the content relevant.
For my news related feeds like TechCrunch or Engadget, the lifecycle of the content is pretty short. For other sites that are more strategic or general, the timeliness isn’t as important, and in most cases, the number of posts is smaller in nature, with 1 or 2 entries per day.
My other new strategy? Move the articles that I want to write about or need further review to another folder. With so many RSS feeds, its important to move the ones that need my attention to another location. If I’m not able to respond right away, I’m able to follow-up in a timely manner and this way they don’t get mixed in with everything else.
What is your feed management strategy in the days of social networking and information overload?
Technorati Tags: social networking, RSS, feed
5 Responses to “What is your RSS feed management strategy?”
my RSS reader is like my morning newspaper - with about 100 feeds or so. a lot of times I just skim the headlines and mark “unread” without hardly reading them. ha. Like yourself I drag articles over into a folder for further reading. Additionally I have a folder for writing and/or idea inspiration.
I really wish there was a way to identify duplicate posts on topics, on a root level. maybe with RSS tags? for instance, when apple launches a new product or offering. i have about 30 duplicate articles on the matter.
By justin on Sep 10, 2007
I’m using illumio, a Window-compatible feed reader. It’s nice because it filters all my 200 feeds based on my interests (which illumio figures out based on indexing my files, web history, emails). Pretty cool technology. Ranks my feed stories from 0 to 4 stars. www.illumio.com
By James on Sep 10, 2007
Justin,
I totally agree re: overlap of specific topics. This tends to be a common problem with so many people publishing content, especially on hot topics. I’m sure someone will figure out an algorithm for searching and ranking . Google maybe?
It would be an interesting exercise. Maybe based on keyword density and some weighting or voting component to determine authority on the subject with links to associated / like minded content. Similar to Digg, but allowing you to enter your own feeds.
James,
thanks for the link to illumio. I’ll be sure to check it out. unfortunately they don’t offer a Mac alternative. =(
By Dustin Jacobsen on Sep 10, 2007
I’ll probably hit the 500 feed mark soon. I have mine divided into folders in Bloglines so that I can review the business-oriented ones in a timely fashion and save the more entertainment-oriented feeds for when I have downtime.
Duplicates are a huge problem and I’ve started unsubscribing from feeds that are notorious for feeding a long list of dups almost every time I log in. I also unsubscribe from any site that doesn’t publish a full feed unless it’s really extraordinary in some way.
When I want to save something to write about, I usually just use the “Keep new” checkbox. If it’s something I’d like to save long-term, I put it in the clippings folder or save it to del.icio.us.
By Average Jane on Sep 10, 2007