How to Go from Joe User to RSS Badass

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Long gone are the days of feebly visiting every website on your daily reading list, checking for new content. These days, all the kids seem to have their favorite RSS reader dialed in with all of their favorite blogs and newsfeeds, eating it up like it’s Thanksgiving dinner. But, dear friends, there’s more to effective RSS reading that just subscribing to every feed you come across and leaving it at that…

The purpose of this post is to give you a few tips that will magically transform you from a vanilla reader of RSS feeds into a veritable RSS ninja - including choice of reader, dealing with specific types of feeds and categorization. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this one…

Reading RSS feeds is sort of like the board game Othello (aka Reversi), whose tag line was something like “A Minute to Learn, a Lifetime to Master” (and I’m sure it’s appeared elsewhere before and since - that’s just where I remember first hearing it). You can show a caveman how to use an RSS reader and subscribe to feeds inside of an hour and he’ll be blissfully clicking the big orange icon on every Tom, Dick and Harry blog and news syndication site he comes across. But there’s more to reading feeds than just skimming headlines, don’t you know?

  • Subscribe Freely, Unsubscribe Mercilessly - RSS Feeds, as much as you may enjoy them, aren’t your friends. They’re there to provide you with information (or entertainment), and that’s all. So, when you come across a site that you find interesting, toss it into your reader and see how it goes. If you don’t read it, for Pete’s sake, get rid of it. Cluttering up your RSS reader will only cause you wasted time, and probably some sublimated sense of guilt because you, somewhere deep in your psyche, told yourself that you wanted to read Dilbert every day - even though you’ve read it twice in the 2 months you’ve subscribed. Banish it forthwith!

  • Choose the Right RSS Reader - You’re only as strong as your weakest tool, so why should you use a sub-par RSS aggregator? It’s not like there aren’t hojillions of them out there, each with their own special way of operating. So, if you find yourself frustrated by any aspect of your current solution, shop around! Personally, I’m a happy Google Reader user. The fact that I can, by and large, drive the entire application without moving my fingers from the keyboard is like music to my soul (plus, it’s a Google product - so you know it wasn’t hacked out by any slouch). The bottom line here is you have to be able to work your reader just like a professional chef works with a fine piece of cutlery (and both take practice). It should be intuitive, easy to operate and configure and it should make adding and removing feeds a complete breeze. If it takes any more than a few mouse clicks to subscribe to a feed, something is wrong and you should seek other options.
  • Use a Feed Combination Tool - There are two types of feeds one subscribes to: those you read religiously and those you don’t. Personally, I’m always waiting to see what comes up next on sites like the del.icio.us blog because I use their site every single day and enjoy hearing about new features and whatnot. I also subscribe to Consumerist, but sometimes that feed will gather well over 15-20 new entries before I go through them. Now, the overall volume of items in a feed will be a determining factor in how often you read, but only you know which feeds you click on excitedly and which you click on because you’re bored. When it comes to feeds that you only read when there’s nothing else going on, why bother having all of them listed separately in your reader? Plug all those pansies into a single feed with something like Feedblendr and create a “river of news” that you can read when you have the time. Perhaps you could call it “Down Time Reading” or something. The rest of the feeds (the ones you’re checking for new content every few minutes) can remain safely un-blended, ready to show you that exciting (1) just as soon as it shows up.
  • Avoid High-Volume Subscriptions like TechCrunch, Digg and BoingBoing (unless you actually read them) - I’m sure this will elicit some haughty sneers, but I have to say it. Some feeds (like the ones mentioned above) somehow became de facto for every techie on the web. These three feeds in particular produce a ridiculous amount of content every day, and I defy anybody with a job to tell me honestly that they read each individual post/article. Personally, I avoid feeds like this altogether because they do nothing but clutter my reader and force me to batch-delete all the posts on the feed every so often (and usually quietly say to myself “I never read this freaking feed…”). So, if you actually read these feeds (or feeds like them), more power to you. But if you subscribe to feeds like this out of some sense of geek loyalty or need to feel like one of the peeps, do yourself a favor and bid them a fond adieu.

RSS (and RSS readers) is a tool just like any other. In the hands of a novice, it’s clumsy and uncomfortable. But in the hands of a seasoned journeyman, it seems to be an extension of the user. You can take control of your reader by implementing these simple bits - trust me :)

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March 27, 2007 | Filed Under Practical, RSS, Technology 

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5 Responses to “How to Go from Joe User to RSS Badass”

  1. Scott Elias on March 28th, 2007

    Excellent advice as usual, Brett. I’m a Google Reader fan and have a bunch of general “news” feeds that always pile up. Typically, I just skim the headlines to see what’s new, but it would be nice to combine them into a single feed. Same with feeds like Lifehacker and Lifehack that produce some great content, but in such volumes that it becomes quickly overwhelming.

    Thanks for the tips!

    Scott

  2. Sean on March 28th, 2007

    Engadget is the big junk feed for me. They produce a huge amount of stuff that I almost always skip over. Yes I should unsubscribe, but when I do I always come back so I can see that one really cool gadget I just need as soon as it is available. I also wanted to point a couple of thumbs up for FeedDemon as a Windows based rss feed reader. It is not free, but it is well (and actively) developed. People should check it out if they are interested in a Windows application for a reader. Good article as always.

  3. Matt G. on March 31st, 2007

    Google reader accommodates two items you mention:

    1. “river of news” - simply put all those feeds in a single folder and minimize it. Then, just click the folder to read these feeds. It should function the same way as your Feedblend

    2. GR’s expanded view is great for sites like LH and Consumerist that produce 1 or 2 posts per hour. As you scroll through them (as quickly as you can), they’re marked as read and will be removed when you refresh. No clicking necessary!

  4. Glenn (Customer Service Experience) Ross on April 6th, 2007

    I’d like to put in a plug for Bloglines based on ease of management.

    Thanks for inspiring me to go through and clean out the dead wood.

    Regards,

    Glenn

  5. New and Used Book Reviews on November 16th, 2007

    New and Used Book Reviews…

    I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

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