That ought to be a controversial enough title. So just what am I talking about?
Well, I got tied up this week with some things and neglected to check in on my subscribed feeds for a few days. I finally got around to doing that today and was greeted with 1000+ new items (Thanks Google for the grace of vagueness). As I started going through the list, I started to realize that alot of it was, for lack of a more graceful term, crap.
There were lots… LOTS… of repeat stories, each trying to get first (or at least a) bite at the apple of some popular topic. Of course, there were usual smattering of Facebook/iPhone themed posts (pause to puke). What was left, I found either boring or otherwise uninteresting. In the end, I think I went through about 200 or so, reading a whole five of those, and eventually just marked everything as read.
Now, complaining aside, I subscribed to all these blogs/news sources. I have in fact, weeded quite a few out that I had initially subscribed to, so the feeds I’m currently subscribed to are blogs that I like or sites that give me interesting information, mostly at least.
Nevertheless, I wonder sometimes if the vast quanity of posts coming from some of these sites, especially when very few ever truly get read on my side, doesn’t constitute a form of spam. Many times, I do end up feeling as I oft did back in the stone ages of email when spam was prevalent but spam filtering no so much.
For kicks and giggles I decided to utilize one of Google Reader’s interesting little features, Trends. Trends give you an at a glance look at not only your own reading habits but also your most frequently updated subscriptions and the percentage of posts from those feeds that you actually read. There’s a definite trend in mine, and I’d be willing to bet that it’s hold true for others.
First let’s take a look at some of the most frequently updated feeds I subscribe to:
| Subscription | Items/Day | % Read |
|---|---|---|
| Engadget | 39.9 | 0% |
| Mashable! | 24.5 | 1% |
| Slashdot | 18.2 | 0% |
| Lifehacker | 16.5 | 1% |
| Wired Top Stories | 10.0 | 0% |
| TechCrunch | 9.2 | 0% |
| Read/WriteWeb | 4.8 | 2% |
It should be noted that most of the 0%’s are not actually zero posts read. Rather, the sheer volume of incoming posts versus what I read rounds to 0%.
Now, let’s look at some of my less frequently updated feeds:
| Subscription | Items/Day | % Read |
|---|---|---|
| Copyblogger | 0.7 | 5% |
| Ruby Inside | 0.7 | 5% |
| Smashing Magazine | 0.6 | 11% |
| Web 2.0 with Ruby on Rails | 0.2 | 33% |
| Nuby on Rails | 0.1 | 25% |
| Dan Manges | 0.1 | 33% |
| Rails Envy | 0.1 | 67% |
The percentage really goes up there. Granted, these feeds are updated less frequently, so I like read as much if not more from the more frequently updated feeds. However, the point is in the percentages. Which site is better in the long run: one that posts hundreds of items but only five get read, or one that posts ten and five get read. In my opinion, the choice is simple: the latter.
I think somewhere in the race to be number one on Technorati or to get some Google love, many bloggers have lost sight of the point of blogging in the first place: providing information to the community at large. The time spent on writing a hundred mediocre posts could be spent in coming up with a handful of really great posts, and everyone wins with that.
But I’m just the new kid on the block, so maybe I’m wrong. But it’s my hope that what I lack in frequency at my blog here, I’ll make up for in quality. That’s my goal anyways.
