Comments on: I unsubscribed from all 129 feeds in my Google reader. Yes, seriously.

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:17:04 +0000

I would look at creating a listing of no more that 10-12 that you MUST see. No matter the subject matter and figure them out and keep them. I’ m going to do this now…

By: Lynn Morton

Lynn Morton — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 05:44:15 +0000

Scott – At least with Google Reader I see my subscription groups as my own aggregates where I can then filter down by individual feed if I want to. Yet, I’m still suffering the blog fatigue.

I think some times people are producing too much content and that’s why it can get a little overwhelming. I find myself skipping over these feeds the most, which then I ask myself why don’t I just unsubscribe? Of course then I’ll stumble upon a morsel that keeps my pallet wet.

I too look to Twitter to figure out what posts my colleagues find valuable. I think the blog is losing it’s power as a destination, but now the content is what makes it rise to the top of the Twitter stream. It is no longer the whole blog itself that has value, but how shareable the individual post is and who and where it’s exported to.

By: Scott Oser

Scott Oser — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:39:58 +0000

Hi Maddie,

You bring up something that I have been thinking about for a long time. I don’t have nearly as many feeds as many of you but I still find myself overwhelmed some times and I do feel guilty when I hit the “mark as all read” button because I just don’t have time to read the feeds and comments that bloglines is notifying me about. I have wondered if just subscribing to a few of the key aggregators (a-list bloggers network, comment-o-matic, etc) would be enough since the majority of blogs I subscribe to at this point are covered here. What does everyone think? Would I be missing out or saving myself time and guilt when I don’t get to everything?

Have a nice weekend.

By: maddie grant

maddie grant — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:58:05 +0000

hmm. will I make the “resubscribe” cut, I wonder?

There is a less drastic measure, which is just to cull your google reader every few weeks and unsubscribe from a few blogs at a time. Or, every time you subscribe to something new, unsubscribe to something old. I actually unsubscribed from all the individual blogs in the a-list bloggers list and just read the aggregate – but after the fact, I realized that I’ve now lowered everyone’s subscriber count by one. That’s not very link-loving, is it. Not sure what to do about that. Not sure that was a good idea.

I feel like things are definitely changing. Brian Solis has seen it, of course, per his post about blogs losing their authority in the statusphere. Maybe we’re all moving towards really truly lifestreaming, not just checking tools out.

By: Sue Pelletier

Sue Pelletier — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:05:24 +0000

And I thought it was glorious just to mark all as “read” without reading them when I came back from vacation. Can’t imagine (gulp) deleting them all. You’re a brave man. Now you have planted the seed…maybe I could not delete them all, but at least weed out the ones that sounded good but don’t offer much after all?

Baby steps.

By: Surfing the Digital Tsunami Part II: Going broad with RSS | There Is NO Box

Surfing the Digital Tsunami Part II: Going broad with RSS | There Is NO Box — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:25:08 +0000

[...] just throwing out the bathwater. [Update 3/12/2009: Let’s not. I followed instruction from Ben Martin, I’m taking a break: Google Reader: Settings >> Subscriptions >> Select all feeds >> Click [...]

By: Zinni

Zinni — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:21:52 +0000

I personally ave never subscribed to any RSS feeds (Not counting Podcasts), and my personal blog has over 3500 followers and 100,000 page views a month. You are absolutely right, if it is important enough you will find it. Plus if you follow the right people on twitter they will filter out what is worth reading for you.

By: David Gammel

David Gammel — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:06:31 +0000

I lost all my RSS subs once on accident (no backup to recover from). I found it pretty freeing as well. Of course, I’m back to over a hundred now.

This reminds me of that e-mail bankruptcy meme from last year.

By: Li.

Li. — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:43:26 +0000

I just a Twitter purge for the same reason – I like having a life and the nonstop posts made it tough to keep up with those that mattered…

By: Matt Baehr

Matt Baehr — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:25:43 +0000

Wow. I too have thought about it. Right now I am just reading a few here and there. And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have even seen this post if I hadn’t seen it on Twitter.