I’m biased towards Google Reader as my current tool for swimming through RSS feeds. That’s not to claim that My Reader is Better Than Yours, or My Reader Can Beat Up Your Reader. I like what I’m getting out of it, and it works for me. I’ve ignored the link for a while listed under See personalized trends for your subscriptions and read items, but took a peak today.
So Big Brother G is monitoring what I’m reading, sharing, starring, but I’ve got nothing to hide. It provides you some data on what feeds you hit a lot, and which ones you read versus skim, all nicely Ajax tabbed. Or ones you skim lightly, since I read lightly:
So I am reading less than 40 items a day ( thought it would be more), though it is questionable if I am reading these versus looking quickly, and mostly headline scanning. The right column gives a sense which of my feeds are heavy publishers (13+ posts per day? Lifehacker). Also useful is the tab for inactive feds:
This has helped trim the feed list, and to correct at least 4 which I had previously had a wrong or out-dated feed URL. I dumped a few dormant feeds as well.
Good reader.
Alan, this GReader newbie has a stupid question – where did you find the link to “See personalized trends for your subscriptions and read items” – I can’t see it anywhere. Is it because I haven’t been using it long enough or personalized it enough? I hate being a newbie.
Scott, click the Home link at the far upper right and from there you’ll see the link to trends.
I wonder how google handles it when you Mark all items read, whether that counts as you reading them or not. I usually read in list view, scanning headlines and opening ones that interest me, then I hit Mark all as read. That seems to keep the info overload at bay.
I share using tags, not the Share option, so I can share with multiple audiences. I’m loving the keyboard shortcuts.
Todd, Thanks! I hadn’t known that was there. Very interesting (though what I find strange – I have GReader set up so that simply passing an item in the reader marks it as read, so in theory I’ve read all the items from all my feeds, yet it is still showing me percentages, I guess that’s because it is a percentage of the total that Greader knows about since I subscribed, and there was a gap between then and when I started using it actively, a few weeks back).
I still have my feet anchored in bloglines, but keep reading posts like this about Google Reader and am gearing up to shift my habit. Argh .. hey I’m flattered that you read me more than Joho the Blog!!
Well, you do rock!