I use Newsfire for my RSS feed addiction and love the way you just have to hit the space bar to move through feeds. I'm sure other feed readers do something similar.

It's easier said than done though to not read every item from every feed!

pixelkid

Yeah, I guess I'm ahead of the curve since I already am doing this... at least, not reading everything in a news feed. I skim the titles, expand and read the synopsis of what interests me, and if it's real good, go read the full article online.

sceo

I can't believe this isn't common sense... Imagine trying to read every article from a digg feed!

chelsel

I use Google Reader, and have an a-list folder (LH is one of the feeds), and a bunch of topical folders. Most days, I check most in the a-list, and then briefly check through the other folders. I then mark all read without guilt.

FiveAcres

I find that in general, I add more feeds than I remove and fully read about 25-30% of my feeds on any given day, just skimming the headlines on the rest.

Although LH posts are prolly up in the 80% read range. You know, I'm just saying...

BlogsOfSteel

@vw195 -- I dunno if it's about being ignorant so much as shaping your flow of information. If you subscribe to everything, you have no control over the quantity or quality of the information you consume. But if you cherry-pick your feed and re-evaluate them from time to time, you suddenly are thinking contentiously about the kinds of information your consuming.

It's basic media literacy, honestly.

Adam French

Yea I find myself addicted to rss feeds I dont think more is better. I recently took off some high volume feeds (like digg)because I didnt want to have to go through so much material, even headlines, especially when I see about 8 nuggets out of 200 that I want to read. Sometimes its better to be ignorant :p

vw195

I should add, however, that it's not about the website's success, but your individual enjoyment of reading its content. A website which offers an RSS feed (and gauges its success by how many hits it gets) giving advice to subscribe to every RSS feed offered is like a mechanic giving you the advice to have your oil change by him every 1000 or 500 miles.

Very self-serving.

Adam French

I disagree with this advice. RSS, like email, can get overwhelming very very quickly if you over-subscribe to things.

Instead I'd suggest what FiveAcres advocates, an A-List group of subscriptions, but without subscribing to something you won't read.

Instead, find a good aggregate site (something specialized to your interests) and scan those headlines by _browsing_ to the site only when you have the time. Then hitting your RSS feed reader is 100% guaranteed to be an enjoyable experience.

Adam French

@Adam French:

More than that, selectivity is just basic literacy.

Anyone who's survived college should know how to scan a text, picking out the headings and sub-headings that interest you, and sliding over the rest.

When you write notes, you don't copy verbatim, you pick out what's important.

I wonder, are the people who "read every single item in their feed" the same people who can't scan textbooks, or can't take notes?

It's an honest question, as I don't have problems with any of them, and they look like related enough skills to be connected (possible one skill), but I could be wrong.

Jon

Google Reader generates statistics based on what you read, and what you skip, so any new feeds I find I keep in a provisional folder/tag.

Every now and again, I'll check to see if I'm actually reading any of the provisional feeds; if I am, I'll move them to somewhere more permanent, otherwise I'll trash them.

I use the list view, scan titles, and the expand only the interesting ones. If they're interesting enough to be commented on, I ctrl-click to open them in a new tab to read and comment on later.

Lastly, if I notice that in a given feed that I'm constantly reading links to other sites, I'll add the feed of the primary source.

Just because you're "subscribed" to multitudes of TV channels doesn't mean you have to watch every single show. You learn to browse the listings and watch only what you like.

The power of RSS lies in being able to add/remove feeds at your whim, no more unwanted and unasked for email subscriptions with arcane unsubscription procedures, no more "thousands of TV channels with nothing good on". Add, remove, add remove, it's easy, and focused in only one app: your reader.

You mean there's people who actually read every item in their feeds? That's like reading the newspaper cover to cover ... kind of last millennium.

Jon

For me, it's not a matter of reading every feed (I don't). But with too many feeds, it's hard to even keep up with scanning headlines to see if you want to read it. One solution is to come up with a hierarchical structure of feeds that puts the least important down deep, so you can dig down if you have time, or mark all as read if I don't. But I use a combination of Google Reader and iGoogle... I put in Reader only those feeds I want to see the headlines for. I put iGoogle items (in separate topic tabs) in for less important feeds that I check out only when I have the time or want to go deeper on a topic area.

Logical Extremes

I'm another "subscribe to everything" and skim over the things you're not interested in. When I have a big backlog of things that I haven't read, I'll usually take a few of the high-noise feeds and just mark them all as read without looking.

t3knomanser

According to Google Reader, I "read" about 300 items on a typical weekday. Of course, I would have to spend almost all day to actually read all of those items, so most of them get spacebarred through.

My strategy is to have a tag that is given to every browsable feed (i.e. not webcomics, music, or political blogs). Sort that folder by oldest, switch to list view, and let the spacebarring begin!

greatslack

@Logical Extremes: Feed organization is a must. At the very least, separate feeds you always read from those you've just started.

I agree, looking at every feed at once can be a mistake, even if you're only scanning. I for example, keep "humor" feeds (like lolcats, webmcomics) in a separate label, so as to not interrupt my less important "serious" news. ;)

Jon

@jtdcg: I'm not sure of what you mean by "overall count" but when you hit "Mark All as Read" in Google Reader, although they do disappear from your unread list, they do not count toward your "Trends".

My count is currently zero, but that doesn't mean all of my feeds are marked as "%100 Read" under Trends. The # Read and % Read only count the feeds whose title's you clicked on, or that you spacebarred through (ie. the text was displayed to you).

Jon

@greatslack: If you spacebar through everything, Google Reader assumes that you've read it, and so you statistics won't be as useful.

But if you use list view, scroll, and expand only the stories you want to read (use click to read them inline, or ctrl-click for a new tab to read after you've scanned eveything), then hit mark all as read once you've hit the bottom, then the statistics generated will be actually useful.

"Mark all as read" doesn't make those items count in the statistics.

Jon

I have been using google reader for 6months or so. At somepoint I got overloaded trying to skim everything and get my count to zero constantly. Now I have a LowPriority folder where I put all the feeds that are less important..and only read them when I have time. I wish there was a way to have this kind of a setup where you could mark them "read" or not have them impact your overall count. Does this exist in other feedreaders?

jtdcg

I've found that the best way to go through feeds faster is with folders, dividing feeds into multiple topics like News, Apple, Blogging, and so on.

Then when I read the feeds I do so a folder at a time. Having an overall context helps more article headlines "make sense", and I know that the items in some folders (Miscellaneous) can just be skimmed while other folders need more attention.

lhmlco

I have a huge number of feeds in my google reader. I usually just read what topic I feel like at a given time: perhaps science blogs, politics blogs, etc.

I really like FiveAcres idea of creating an A-list though, thanks! There do seem to be several blogs among different topics that I frequent more than others...

sgstarling

The google reader trends helps me cull whatever I NEVER read, allowing me to subscribe at will and not worry about anything. If I see I'm not reading something ever, I cut it out and don't look back.

There is no place for guilt in RSS feeds or weekly magazines. Only makes you insecure.

zingbot

lonewolf333

Does anyone have a recommendation for a Firefox based newsreader which filters the news items based on rules?

I used Sage. I currently use Brief. Neither have any filtering capability. I've just tried NewsFox 5 minutes ago but found that its folder management is not intuitive and it crashed on me. I don't want something based on an online service like Google Reader.

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

lemur

I thought everyone did this. After a few weeks, I end up with 1000+ in my google newsreader. If seeing unread bugs you, hit mark all as read. I subscribe to my local newspaper, but I don't read the ENTIRE newspaper, just what looks interesting, which varies on my mood.

goodywitch

@jon Perhaps I wasn't clear. I'd like a reader feature where I could set certain feeds to not show as unread at all. Almost a "hold" on the subscription so that it isn't showing up on my new article count at all. I'd like to stay subscribed to certain feeds and read them occasionally without the annoyance of constantly having to mark them all as read.

jtdcg

I read in GReader's List View, advancing through each list with the N key, making each line item that doesn't look like it's worth reading with M to mark it as read; the refresh the list to purge the marked ones, leaving only the unread. Once I've done this with each feed, only then do I actually read each item. I can pare down a dozen feeds in as many minutes this way, prior to reading what remains.

Just because you don't have to read everything you come across doesn't mean it's a good idea to give yourself more items to say no to. If I find myself continually ambivalent about reading new post from certain blog, I know it's time to dump that feed. I can always check the blog manually if I feel I'm missing something.

Andre Kibbe

can't believe they didn't mention get a mobile viewer ... I connect to google reader via my treo and do probably 90% of my rss reading during otherwise unproductive time.

train rides, bathroom breaks, doctor waiting rooms, boring conferences/meetings, etc. are great times to pull up those rss feeds and flick through 'em. I star those that are of interest and go back to them later when i'm online.

loads mroe productive than equivalent time spent twittering!

TechTalk WRLR 98.3FM

I like the advice, good way to look at RSS feeds.

anthonylitz

@jtdcg: I see what you're saying, I haven't found a solution for that other than having a separate reader for those "unimportant feeds". If you use an iGoogle homepage, do what others have said and use it for those feeds you just want to peruse every now and again.

@Andre Kibbe: I agree that it's a bad idea to only add more and more feeds. When scanning becomes tedious, it's time to cut some feeds out.

The beauty of RSS is that you control the subscriptions, not the feed provider. If you keep track of your usage (whether by feed statistics or just remembering which feeds you read most often) you can periodically cull out what you don't need anymore.

There are no restrictions about adding and removing feeds, if your lifestyle changes and you have less time for feed reading, then cut out less important feeds. You can always add them later.

I've been reading high volume feeds (LH, BoingBoing, etc.) for years, but when I was living in Africa and had internet only once or twice a month for an hour or so, I had to unsubscribe to practically all of them just so I could scan the smaller feeds that were more important to me. Once my internet time went up, I added more feeds again.

I can't imagine ever reaching a point when my list of feeds is static.

Jon

Who are these people that read every feed item that comes into their reader? Sure, some days I read a lot of what is posted, but I separate the ones I'm interested in from those I'm not by starring news stories as I scroll through them at various points in the day. If I don't have time to actually read them at that moment, they are saved for later. I've been using this method successfully for almost 2 years I would guess.

Ninjeff

laurion

If Henry David Thoreau were posting to LH he might say as he did in Life Without Principle: "In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while."

As for myself (poor wretch that I am), I use google reader, subscribe to every interesting thing I come across as another way of bookmarking, but usually only read a few prioritized feeds each day. Occasional news reading binges are for those days when I'm trying to hide out from myself or, as I self-justify, nourish my creative spirit with serendipitous input from the collective consciousness.

ms.mars

I'm an oversubscriber as well, keeping 1,000+ unread items regularly in the background. My strategy is to arrange things in topical folders like `finance', `tech', `people' and in each folder arrange feeds by the frequency with which they're updated. So if I have, say, the Lifehacker and Digg feeds in the tech folder, I put Lifehacker above Digg in the folder list so I can skim through the (fewer) Lifehacker posts (opening whatever looks interesting in the backgound while I continue skimming), and then just Space down to the lengthier Slashdot feed.

This works great when there are a bunch of feeds to go through in each folder.

yawar.amin

I had just gone through all my feeds and trimmed them down. I like the idea of sorting feeds into two different priorities.

Myles

It's easy to say get over the urge to read everything, but it's extremely difficult to do. What if I miss the next great life-altering tip because it's buried in the fourth paragraph. You'd be surprised how many times I've found good thoughts and tips there.

LazyManAndMoney

I'm an RSS oversubscriber. I found myself wanting filtering capabilities similar to that for email (i.e. bayesian filtering). Looking around the web, I couldn't find anything that would do the job without requiring me to abandon my feed reader in favor of a less functional one run by the filtering service.

I decided to create my own, which is now up and running at www.rssninja.com

It lets you create a version of a feed which has a rating box embedded in each post. You can use the filtered feed anywhere and when you click on a link in a post's rating box it will be marked as spam and similar posts will be (more likely to be) filtered out in the future.

rssninja

SocialManiac

I agree with the idea of over-subscribing. I have a very short "A-list" of websites; I pay a fair amount of attention to these via my Google home page. On top of this, I have a plethora of RSS subscriptions that I only read via Google Reader on my smartphone. This means when I'm bored on the road, I'll never run out of reading material. The ones I miss? Oh, well.

onesix18

That's why I use Feedhub (www.feedhub.com) -- I have it aggregate everything I subscribe to and only present me with what it thinks are the most interesting posts. It lets me set a throttle on how many posts to see and it creates a feed I then subscribe to in GReader. I keep all the feeds in GReader too -- in case I want to look for low-lying content.

Lymond

@Adam French: Haha, self-serving indeed. And ironic, considering Lifehacker will separately advise both pruning and subscribing.

I will unsubscribe from any feed that starts to post too much content in a given day: the "administrativeness" of dealing with a heavy hitter (e.g. Digg) isn't worth the time, even when I don't read all the content. LH passed that point long ago, and I haven't subscribed since. The topical feeds don't really work (things are over-categorized), and even running the feeds through AideRSS didn't help.

Andrewski

Thanks for the pointer to the readwriteweb article. That's turned out to be a great blog to follow.

I agree that trying to manage a ton of feeds can be a challenge. And while I like the idea of oversubscribing -- and psychologically trying to live with not reading 100% of the articles -- this still leaves me without a way to cut through the overload and clutter.

As a result we built [www.bscopes.com] to help find the connections in the blogosphere. Rather than different variations on text and reading, we are focusing on a way to visualize blogs and their relationships through pictures.

We are in the early stages of our effort and would love feedback from other overwhelmed bloggers who are trying to manage a ton of feeds every day.

bscopes

@goodywitch: Same reason I don't read the newspaper. :)

Andrewski

Because i have so many newsfeeds, i'm only reading this article now.

When does news stop being news...

Wofall

@LazyManAndMoney: Part of the solution comes from the level of trust that develops between producer and consumer.

I highly recommend both readers and writers watch Cory Doctorow's "How to be an Uber-Blogger" on youtube:

+ Watch video

It's not about SEO or anything hokey, but about developing a relationship with your readers.

In a nutshell: blog posts (or anything distributed over RSS) should be written with a mind for scanning and indexing: ie. titles that represent the post content (nothing clever or non-descriptive), along with the first couple sentences summarizing the content.

When that happens, it makes it easier for us readers, because we can look at the title and quickly judge our interest, and so we come to trust that blog, because they won't have a title that leads on to something that we're not interested in. We're more forgiving of posts that don't interest us, because the title will clearly warn us away from it.

Thus we come to trust the blog. I love LH, but a quick look at my stats shows that I only read 32% of the items posted. Even with such a low number I won't unsubscribe because when I scan through LH titles, I can trust that I can accurately "judge the post by it's title". I can forgive the crap (ie. GTD stuff ) I'm not interested in, because I trust that LH will mention GTD in the post title.

The problems comes from high volume blogs with posts without straight forward descriptive titles, that like to put the clever punch-line into the title, which means I can't trust that the post will be interesting to me until I read it. That slows me down and after getting burned enough, I'll drop the feed.

Jon