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Written by Martin Belam
 The great promise of RSS
feeds was that they would save us from information overload. However, when
subscribing to more feeds every day is just a click away, we can all too easily
become swamped by the very mechanism that was meant to help us.
By the way, if you don't really understand what RSS is, head over to
'RSS the Oprah Version' for the clearest explanation of the technology I've
seen.
Choose your software or service carefully
One of the most
important choices you have to make is whether to use desktop or browser based
software.
FeedDemon and NetNewsWire have been two of the most successful software packages. Some software, like
Newsgator, even allows you to integrate your RSS
feeds into your email client.
The major advantage of
browser based services is that your RSS subscriptions follow you everywhere you
go. The market leaders in online feed reading are Google Reader and Bloglines, though Rojo is an interesting service with
unique features.
If you only have a
couple of RSS subscriptions, then it may be that you don't need an RSS reader
at all. Most modern browsers allow you to subscribe directly to feeds as 'live
bookmarks', which appear as drop-down menus, featuring the site's latest
content.
A fourth possibility is
to use RSS to build your own custom page. iGoogle and My Yahoo! are attempts to
allow users to build their own Web portal page, and they integrate RSS feeds.
Services like Pageflakes and Netvibes take this
approach further, allowing you to build an entire page out of modules made from
your favourite feeds.
Organisation,
organisation, organisation
The most important part of
managing your RSS feeds is to organise them in a way that makes sense to you,
and facilitates your particular type of browsing.
One obvious route to organising feeds is by topic. The majority of RSS
readers allow you to put your subscriptions into folders. Google Reader uses
tags to achieve much the same effect.
But topic isn't the only
way to group feeds. Frequency might be another factor you take into
consideration. A source like CNN will publish many stories every day, whereas
your favourite blogger may only produce one or two posts a week. If they end up
in the same folder, one may 'swamp' the other. Putting your frequently
publishing 'news' feeds into their own folders helps you see when smaller publishers
have added content.
The average length of each
post might be another type of criteria you use. On Dan Hill's 'City Of Sound' blog, the majority of his posts approach book
chapter length, complete with stunning photography. It is no use quickly
checking your UX blogs expecting to read 2,000 words in total, and finding one
of Dan's brilliant essays in there, demanding 20 minutes of your attention. It
is much better to organise it so that when you go to read the 'City Of Sound'
feed, you know what to expect, and can give it the attention that it deserves.
Read your feeds
as part of your daily routine
The best way to make
sure that you never get overwhelmed with masses of unread content is to build a
regular time to look at feeds into your daily routine. Whether it is over your
first cup of coffee, after your lunch-break, or just before you go home at night,
set some time aside for feed reading. Even just 5 or 10 minutes each day
skimming through the headlines and articles in your subscriptions will leave
you feeling up-to-date, and better informed about what is going on in your area
of interest.
Use an audition
folder or tag
One way to avoid
over-indulging in adding new subscriptions is to have a 'holding area'. Instead
of placing new feeds directly within your carefully organised folder structure,
place them in an 'audition' folder.
By checking the audition
folder once a fortnight, your potential new sources will have had a chance to
publish a few posts. Reading four or five articles from the same source in one
sitting should be enough to help you judge whether you want to retain this as a
permanently subscribed feed. If you do, move the subscription into the
appropriate folder. If you don't - simply delete it.
Prune regularly
Regularly pruning your
subscription list is an excellent discipline to get into. Don't forget that the
power of RSS is that it allows you to choose the information that is presented to you. If you find the contents of a feed
are boring you, or you have started to get irritated every time you read the
views of one particular political blogger, then ditch them.
Don't feel bad about it.
RSS is there to improve
the scope of the Web that you can be familiar with, not to present you with
content that you find mundane, yet feel obligated to continue reading.
Take advantage
of service specific features
Many RSS reading
services have specific functionality to make managing reading feeds easier.
FeedDemon, for example,
helps you cull dead feeds from your subscription list by automatically flagging
as 'dinosaurs' feeds which have not been updated for over thirty days.
Bloglines offers a
feature called 'playlists', allowing you to group feeds in multiple ways. This
means you can organise your most important feeds into a 'Must read' playlist,
or make a 'First thing in the morning' playlist, or a 'Fun at lunchtime'
playlist for your Dilbert or celebrity gossip subscription.
Rojo takes a different
approach. Items are initially displayed according to how often you have previously
read items from each feed, how many subscribers a feed has overall, and how
many people have read or bookmarked a particular item. It reduces a large
quantity of content down to the important individual bits of news, without you
having to lift a finger to do the organising yourself.
'Mark all as
read' - even when they aren't
All types of RSS readers
come with a 'Mark all as read' button. Sadly, it isn't a big red 'panic'
button.
Well, actually, in the case of FeedDemon, it is!
Don't be afraid to use
it.
If you are suddenly
overwhelmed because you have 1,500 unread items in your RSS feeds after a
week's break from work - simply scrub them out.
If one of the stories you've
erased was huge news, the chances are that people will still be talking about
it a week later anyway. By giving yourself a clean slate you'll most likely
only miss a few interesting teacup storms, rather than any big developments.
Subscribe to 'Repeaters'
Some news sources become
authorities on the Web by re-posting the latest news. They aren't necessary sources
of original content, but act as
'repeaters' for a particular content niche. Subscribing to these types of sites
can make your RSS reading more efficient, as they do the hard work of scouring the top blogs and news outlets in
your speciality.
One example is
SearchEngineLand. You don't have to subscribe to
lots of blogs about Google or Yahoo! Instead, SearchEngineLand's RSS feed will
bring all that news to you in one neat package, and is guaranteed to link to
interesting comment about any development in the search engine industry.
Avoid the
'Curse of RSS' by subscribing to search results
Jiannis Sotiropoulos recently
described 'the curse of RSS'.
When we first use it, we
are keen to find interesting new blogs and sources to add to our subscriptions.
Then, after a while, the amount of attention required by our subscribed feeds
begins to exceed the amount of time we have to read them. So we stop looking
for new feeds. We end up in a 'comfort zone', and new, potentially interesting
voices don't get a chance to be heard.
One great way to get
around this is to subscribe to RSS feeds of search results. Services like
Google's Blog search or Bloglines allow you to subscribe to a feed of the results
for a particular keyword search.
In those results you should be able to spot up-and-coming new blogs
writing in your area of interest. If something catches your eye, you can pop a
subscription to that blog into your 'auditions' folder, and then see over time
if they are a useful new source of reading material.
Enjoy reading
Used well, RSS feeds can
be a powerful tool for managing information consumption. Used poorly, they can
seem to drown you in a torrent of bewildering and overwhelming content. Following
some of these ideas should allow you to manage an RSS reading list that is the
right size for you.
Using RSS should be a
liberating experience, freeing you from the hassle of trying to remember to
visit lots of bookmarked sites. You need never again waste time on visiting a
site which hasn't updated since the last time you were there.
Above all else, building
your feed reading into your daily routine shouldn't be a chore. There are
millions of RSS feeds out there for you to choose from - go out and enjoy
reading them.
Useful links
What is RSS - http://www.whatisrss.com/
How to explain RSS the Oprah way - http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2006/09/how_to_explain_.html
Jiannis Sotiropoulos on The RSS Curse - http://changemod.com/755/2008/02/12/rss-curse/
Dan Hill's City of Sound
- http://www.cityofsound.com
SearchEngineLand - http://www.searchengineland.com
FeedDemon - http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx
Google Reader - http://www.google.com/reader
Bloglines - http://www.bloglines.com
Martin Belam is an
independent internet consultant and author, with 8 years experience working
with global brands including Sony, Vodafone and the BBC. Martin specialised in
search analytics at the BBC, and has since worked in areas such as online news,
personalised email broadcast solutions, and the user experience definition for
online and mobile retail services. Originally from London
in the UK, he is now based
on the Greek island
of Crete. Martin blogs at
http://www.currybet.net
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