So, I'm learning about RSS feeds, having a good time, minding my own business when BAM!, an actual mountain of information crushed my spirit.
Seriously though, I was enjoying Google reader and the prospect of getting all my news on one "station". I started browsing some possible feeds to add and decide the comic strip Unshelved is a good pick. Hhmmmm, what else? Well, the links in the CMLibrary don't go anywhere and the Charlotte.com link is broken too. Scroll down a bit, click on Technorati. Now we're talkin, stem cell research and human embryo cloning. Where is the RSS tag for this (this, this....wait a minute what is this?). It's a blog and I don't know this guy or enough about stem cell research to know if anything I just read is true. Wait, this is a blog search engine. Not what I'm looking for. I'm back on Google reader page and click Browse for stuff and there is a "bundle" of news feeds that look decent enough so I subscribe and BAM!, 192 items fill my reading list. And like that, the light has gone out, my spark for RSS feeds is dead.
I walked away for awhile and thought about it. I decided to unsubscribe to everything and then try choosing again, more selectively this time. I did just that and started to see value in having all my news on one page, although I have to admit that it will take some time to collect the feeds from all the sources I generally enjoy.
Hi Anna - my spark is fading fast. It's been more than a week since I've added feeds to my google reader and I have to admit - I see the number of stories that came in over a couple of days and it is so overwhelming that I don't even check any of them out. And these were the feeds that ARE interesting to me professionally, not just the general ones (like CNN news). Maybe I'll figure out how to balance overload vs. sifting through to find the ones that are worth reading. Until then, I'm just visiting the pages of the news sites that I can when I find the time.
ReplyDeleteMy initial excitement also began to diminish as I experienced my reader filling up fast. Within the first couple of days of activating it and signing up to feeds I quickly reached 1000+ items and have not gone below since. I have also been thinking about reevaluating the amount I subscribe to. This might be a situation where quality is better than quantity because I will actually read more with less.
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