Speaking of e-mails, what about your feeds?
As I was flying up to Seattle for Memorial Day weekend, I was thinking about my last post and wondering: since most of mainstream America is obsessed with e-mail now… I wonder if the same thing will happen to blog feeds. In 5 years, will there be a report labeled “We are a nation obsessed with feeds”?
When I think about people I know, some of them are already obsessive about their feeds. They check bloglines/their favorite aggregator at least once an hour. If you’re someone like Scoble and you have 1300+ feeds, you pretty much have to set aside huge chunks of time to go through the massive amounts of content. Even with my relatively meager ~70 feeds, it takes me at least half an hour a day to get up to date.
So this is what I’m wondering:
- How many feeds do you subscribe to?
- How often do you check your aggregator?
- How long does it take you to read through the updates each day?
Leave a comment with your response - don’t be shy, I know a lot of people out there only read… get involved in the conversation 
May 27th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
I’ve got 15 feeds only, but this number is going to increase over time. My aggregator checks all the feeds every 30 minutes. I think that i need at least 15 minutes to read all the things, and since I’m subscribed to the feed of www.versiontracker.com that gets update when someone adds an update to the listing, i think other couple of minutes every hour goes away with this.
Ciao!
May 27th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
1. Over 100.
2. Several times a day.
3. Don’t know. I’d estimate 30 mins to an hour.
May 27th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
1.) 58 feeds
2.) If I don’t check it at least 3 times a day I might as well not bother because it gets too long.
3.) Probably an hour a day
May 27th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
I have 267 feeds in Bloglines right now, although some are for things like the comments on my blog, friends’ photos from Flickr, and some Google Groups. I check much more often than I probably should, but it doesn’t take me too long to get through them all, as I do a lot of headline scanning. When a title catches my eye (or a photo) I’ll read the whole thing, or open it in a tab to read over later.
Throughout the entire day, I probably spend 1 to 2 hours reading feeds, or things that I found as a result of a feed. As long as I don’t get too far behind, and check every 45 to 60 minutes, it doesn’t take long to clear out the new stuff.
May 27th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
1) 251 Feeds, I probably only read 20 active feeds, my blog has my blogroll.
2) I use Bloglines, Its on in the background all the time, reading when I have time
3) I usually take about 1hr - 1.5 hrs a day.
May 27th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
I’m subscribed to 90 feeds. I check them maybe a dozen times throughout the day (it seems easier to take 5 minutes to check a few new posts than sitting down and wading through 300+). When and if I do miss a day or wait until the morning to read it’ll take me about an hour (because I like to blog some things, simultaniously).
May 27th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
40 feeds on a daily basis, and always growing. I generally check FeedDemon twice a day, though I may hit it periodically throughout the day to finish reading the feeds. I would estimate it takes me an hour or two to get through them all - what with the comment posting and all!
May 27th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
I have 129 feeds, I check them probably once an hour, I sit here on the computer all day with bloglines up so it’s easy to get distracted. I would guess I spend at least an hour today going thru my feeds.
May 27th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
I’m subscribed to 42 feeds
I check bloglines 4-5 times a day
I spend about 30-45 minutes reading through them
May 27th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Close to 200 feeds, I read around 40 in detail, the rest are just glance overs. Around 30 (and growing) of the 200 are technorati & delicious tags. I make great use of “saved searches” in my aggregator which saves time.
My aggregator is always on, but so is my email notifier. When on the move, I only monitor my email (OK, I do have a couple of feeds setup for rss2email
). I could easily live without feeds, but not without email…
May 27th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
I have 281. I’m pathetic, I know. And it grows daily. I have lost complete control over it. I look at it several times a day, if I don’t, then I have hours of catching up to do. I am more addicted to my feeds than I am my emails. (yes, I realize I’m a sad sad person — sex would probably cure me, but I’m too picky for a one night stand)
May 27th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
I have about 70 feeds in bloglines. I go through them in the morning and then every couple hours. I mark anything that takes more than two minutes of attention as new. I then have something I can go back to at lunch or after work when I have more time. Great way to keep in touch.
But the best feature is the fact that you can search your feeds. I’ve used this several times after that ‘I know I read that somewhere’ moment that creeps up.
May 27th, 2005 at 7:54 pm
1. Same as you, about 70.
Way more than I should. Probably at least once an hour, if not significantly more.
2. Depends on how much actual work I have to do at work…
3. Depends on how much crap Scoble puts on his blog… Probably an hour or so.
Your mind control device must be working overtime, Mark. I swear I just started writing a related blog entry last night…
May 27th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
1. I’m subscribed to about 25 feeds, but only about 15 of them are updated on a daily basis. Some examples: Engadget, Scobleizer, Bink.nu, Google Blog.
2. Usually 30 minutes but I have a firm limit of 1 hour at most.
3. Usually I reed my feeds about once a day, although sometimes twice.
Zaheer Chothia
May 28th, 2005 at 3:54 am
1. 4975 feeds
2. always on
3. i read my feeds ad hoc.
May 28th, 2005 at 6:09 am
1. around 250 feeds
2. On bloglines, which is open all day. I tend to check first thing, lunchtime and evening, but take glances during boring telecalls!
3. I probably spend, over a day 90 mins reading, but focus on certain feeds. I tend to catchup at weekends.
May 28th, 2005 at 6:41 am
1. Around 30 feeds.
2. Whenever I am not working.
3. Around 45 minutes.
May 28th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
0 feeds
0 times a day
0 min spent a day
May 29th, 2005 at 5:33 am
1) About 50
2) 3-5 times a day
3) 10 minutes to one hour
May 29th, 2005 at 11:37 am
1. 28. (One of i is a ‘planet’ with another 27 feeds used.)
2. If I have no urgent job - about 3 times a day. BTW: Your feed was the first one I have added to my aggregator.
3. Summarizing all ‘feed sessions’, below an hour a day. If I have some more time, and the topic is interesting, I sometimes surf 3-5 clicks away from the post.
May 29th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
1 Over a hundred feeds from world news, technology news and personal blogs
2&3 I read the feeds as I get them in my Feedreader but at a busy day, I normally spend lunch breaks and after-office hours to clear up to 50% at least.
May 29th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
1. around 270 feeds; on some I just skim the headlines and read the odd interesting post (specially “news” feeds), on a few I actually read every word
2. once a day at lunch time, with minor checks every now and then on specific feeds
3. approximately one hour
May 29th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
1) 207 feeds
2) Once in two hours
3) Around 1.5 hrs
May 30th, 2005 at 1:36 am
i subscribe to probably a dozen or so feeds, but many of them are also aggregators (gnomefiles, mono, etc.) so in effect ther are many more…
i scan them throughout the day and read interesting posts when I have time… probably an hour or so spread out over the entire day (when i am not responding to them that is…)
a good quote from an interview i found this weekend: “how to be productive by not spending all day reading other people’s weblogs”… i might try that at some point if a get a chance…
May 31st, 2005 at 11:50 pm
stop wasting your life away. feed me
June 3rd, 2005 at 2:09 pm
1. 354 feeds.
2. 3-4 times a day.
3. 2 hours, at least.
MS
June 4th, 2005 at 10:21 am
1. 91 feeds
2. 3-5 times a day (I have bloglines open all the time)
3. A few hours
I have had spotty internet access over the month of May and I think I will have to clear out my bloglines feeds as I don’t think I will ever catch up.
June 6th, 2005 at 2:26 am
I have a measley 30-something, which I check top-to-bottom no more than 3x a day. I use the livefeeds element of Firefox and Bloglines, so I may also do quick scans of some blogs throughout the day.
June 6th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
The only feeds I read are family/real-life-friends (who I see regularly, not folks I know solely online). I try to make computer time scarce. I use it to pay bills, upload pictures/video clips to my blog for all my extended family (my Mom has 13 brothers and sisters and I’ve got too many cousins to count). I may surf during a lunch break, or while I’m waiting for my laundry to dry, but that’s it (2-3 times per week at most).
The real question is when will Tivo/DVRs add feed support so you can read while you’re sitting at your TV. Then, like the AOL/WebTV-ization of blogs and feeds will begin.
MythTV already has RSS feed support: MythTV features: An RSS news feed reader module. [screenshot]
I do, however, still skim my local daily paper’s email they send out at least 2-3 times per week. That way I’m not in the dark about local, statewide, and even national events. I still don’t get why people pay for the newspaper.
The reason I even found this blog was due to my newspaper linking to Corporate blogging from an AP story.
June 6th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Hi Jason, that’s interesting but I don’t see why you’d rather have your feeds on your TV. IMO, it’s far easier to read content on my computer screen than it is to read it on my TV.
June 7th, 2005 at 6:23 pm
[…] be 35% of what actually pops up in my aggregator. If you have a minute, I think Mark Jen’s related discussion is interesting. The internet and blogosphere are constantly expanding while minutes in the day w […]
September 8th, 2006 at 8:12 am
3648
See porn here!