September 17, 2008

RSS Overload?

I cracked up when I opened up this blog post from Common Craft on Monday morning.

I took last Friday off from work and sure enough returned to an overflowing inbox (I have yet to join the Blackberry, iPhone, Mobile email world…if I did, I would be the guy on the train with his head buried and hand glued…instead I find it to be my only chance to read during the day). 

I’ve also been guilty of oversubscribing. Newsletters, blogs, tweets, videos, you name it, I subscribe. It’s always been my take that there is too much good info out there and I want to consume it all. The good news is that I’ve gotten better.

Similar to the action taken by the Common Craft author, I too have begun honing in on what I really pay attention to and trying to limit the clutter (I mean that in a good way. In an ideal world, I’d love to have enough time to consume everything I’m initially interested in. It’s just not practical.)

I’ve only been on Twitter a few months, but after using the site for a bit, I was blown away by the number of users that A) post over 10 tweets a day B) follow over 1,000 people. If you’re on Twitter, you know that it’s simply impossible to keep tabs on what 1,000 people are tweeting about. Similarly, when you begin subscribing to an absurd amount of blogs, it gets out of control (unless of course social media monitoring happens to be your primary task at work). 

There are tools like FriendFeedand others to help us aggregate and keep tabs on what are close contacts are posting to various sites. I’ve also found that I tend to always pay close attention to the blogs which I subscribe to via email whereas I tend to check my Google Reader once a week or so. Consequently, I also find that it’s more manageable and that I spend more time commenting and engaging in the larger community with a more specific focus.

Got a case of RSS overload yourself? I highly recommend taking a look at all you’ve subscribed to and trimming down the feeds. Unless it’s this blog of course.

Cheers,
Scott

Join the conversation! 3 Comments

  1. I’m one of those baby boomers who like all things electronic, but one of the things that I did not get into was Twitter. By the time I seriously looked into it, I was already overloaded with RSS feeds, most of which are not in my niche.

    I think this blog is very timely. Just a few days ago, I started trimming down my feeds. Reading all of the blogs we subscribe to takes a good chunk of time out of our day; either that or we scan blogs and are done in about 2 minutes, which does not do them justice.

    Reply
  2. I like your blog. It’s smarter than mine. I think your blog, Facebook, Twitter et al represent your job well.

    I am now an RSS Subscriber to this feed.

    All is well at Schubas. Come see us.

    Reply
  3. Thanks Tim, great to run into you in the ‘sphere.

    Reply

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