Like Ping, until recently I was an outsider. I read blogs in a browser (yeuch!), keeping track of updates using only the crusty old technology of blo.gs. I had a system that I thought was pretty good — I’d open every blog that had updated since I last posted, read them all and then post something, clearing my cache. It worked, until everyone else in the world started a) using RSS readers, so they don’t bother to ping blo.gs anymore and b) saying such interesting stuff that my blogroll got too big to manage by this quaint little method.
So, when we returned from SXSW, I decided that I’d give Bloglines a whirl. [As an aside, I appear to be some sort of takeover thermometer — I just recently started using both Bloglines & Flickr, then realised they’d both been bought up for ridiculous amounts. I’m not sure if I’m perpetually late to the party or possibly going to make an absolute fortune by noting these tendencies and betting on the market 😉 ]
Having played the feed-reader game for a little while, I have some observations:
- It is really annoying when feeds only include summaries. Sites where before I would read every word of every entry, I am hardly looking at now because it’s so annoying to have to click through for sentence 2.
- The corollary to the point above is that I now understand why so many sites have the annoying design “feature” where in the actual site you only get to see 2 lines of the entry. That’s not enough to decide whether or not to click the link and read it! Time is short. Googlebot might follow every link on your homepage, but people won’t. I think that with all the cool kids using RSS readers rather than browsers, even the site owners have probably missed how bloody annoying this is**
- Bloglines should have an option that lets you see all the feeds available at a certain location. I’ve imported my subscriptions from blo.gs and sometimes it defaults to a snippets feed even when there’s a full-text feed available. I want an easier way to find these than to search individually
- I find myself much less likely to comment if I’m not actually looking at the site itself. Do other people find this too?
** I have the utmost respect for all these people and I read them — they’re all on my blogroll. I only single them out because, let’s face it, they are the cool kids and if they’re screwing up where’s the hope for the rest of us?
Comments (4) Permalink
April 5th, 2005 at 8:22 PM
Interesting. I’ve been known to play with dedicated RSS readers: There was once a plug in for MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Sage for Firefox. I’ve never really enjoyed reading content through them though.
Whilst I agree entirely about the “previews” in RSS (utterly counter productive), I find that I much prefer to read blogs on the owner’s own site. There’s a far more personal feel to it, rather than reading everything in the same generic view. Maybe this is because I thrive reading the blogs of designers: John Oxton, Hicks and Marlarkey all have such character and individualism in their sites that would leave me feeling rather unfulfilled if I were to just strip out their text and read it through some standard UI. It doesn’t really suit me.
It’s either some sort of deep-rooted designer within me, trying to get out… or just that I’m a sucker for pretty colours.
Blogroll wise: I have my own plugin (sadly not in any fit state for distribution.. yet) which I use to download the Blogs RSS feed hourly and display it newest first in my sidebar. The plan is to upgrade the backend script to also download the RSS feed from each site in the list and extract as much information as possible (post title, date of last/number of comments, etc.) then aggregate it into a definition list somewhere (thus alleviating the “has that person really updated?” problem).
Once I make my mind up about WordPress I will endevour to build the upgraded version into a full blown plugin. Probably late for WordPress 2.0 – or 3.
April 5th, 2005 at 10:35 PM
I much prefer full feeds also.
I find that I end up clicking on the preview in the Bloglines add process to make sure I get the “best one. Sometimes it still doesn’t work, and I end up viewing source to see which feed the author prfers.
As for the sites you linked to that use excerts on the home page, I must confess that I usually link to individual posts from feeds, so I rarely encounter it.
Just noticed something weird here. The comment text area is too wide in Firefox (at least on this visit, so it extends behind the blogroll. Functions fine, just a bit disconcerting.
April 7th, 2005 at 9:29 PM
I’ve tried a few RSS readers over the years and hated them all until I tried the new beta of NetNewsWire for OS X. Maybe the OS X honeymoon effect is still operational but I love it, and it’s made me start reading more than a handful of weblogs again after I’d more or less drifted away from the entire blogosphere.
Now I shall just have to find a cool piece of technology that will induce me to write things again…
October 12th, 2005 at 1:04 PM
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