How often do you read your feeds?

by Andy Brudtkuhl on July 19, 2006

Do you check your feeds as often as email?

How often do you check your RSS subscriptions?

I check mine once or twice daily and if I comment I do it right after reading. Sometimes a save a firefox session of blog posts that I want to read later if I see some I do not have time to read.

What about you? It is interesting to know how people use RSS and RSS tools in comparison to tools like it such as email.

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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

Amos July 19, 2006 at 6:14 pm

I’ll look at my subscriptions three-four times a day which is probably two or three times too many. I check RSS more than my email. I’m good with checking email once or twice a day.

If I don’t comment right after reading a post, as I’m doing here, then I usually won’t later. I try to flag items or save sessions with posts I’d like to comment on but if I miss it the first time I usually don’t go back later. Usually. I’ve got to try flagging posts more in Newsfire. See how that goes.

Reply

kenji mori July 19, 2006 at 7:01 pm

I try to check a few times a day; but in fact it varies depending on circumstances. Sometimes I don’t check it for days; other times, I check (“refresh”, I mean, google reader) a few times an hour.

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J Phill July 19, 2006 at 9:26 pm

I check my feeds numerous times a day. I love reading about web stuff, so I am always looking to read new articles and posts. I make sure that I block out a good amount of time a day to read as many of the updated feeds as possible.

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Cas July 20, 2006 at 4:10 am

I keep the rss reader going in the background so when I am at the computer (usually evening and weekends) it checks every half hour.

If there’s only one or two new feeds and I am not in the middle of something I’ll take a break and read the new ones then and there.

If there’s lots (upwards of 200 if it’s the first time I’ve turned on the comp. that day) I’ll block out a time in my schedule and go through them in one big splurge.

As for commenting I tend to do it then and there or else I forget. On occasion there are articles that require more indepth conversations in which case I will bookmark the post to go back to later (though I don’t always remember).

Reply

karmatosed July 20, 2006 at 5:40 am

I check morning and evening personally. I split my feeds into work and play ones in a way. I get daily through newsfire project ones from basecamp and so on and then use the other ones through Flock so I don’t check every two seconds. I got fed up with newsfire zero reaching obsession and divided my feeds up to save time. My comments also come after reading generally and I try to do that as a time factor. Usually at least 4 or 5 a day I end up commenting on if I was putting a figure on it as an average.

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Andy Brudtkuhl July 20, 2006 at 9:42 am

Excellent comments. Again, it’s very interesting to study RSS habits as it has not been very well documented.

I, like karmatosed, have my feeds organized by folders. I have a daily folder that I check in the morning. I then split others into categories like Marketing, Technology, Development, etc. I try to get to those daily but I make sure I check the ones most important to me first.

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Chris Busse July 20, 2006 at 11:37 pm

I use an online feed reader / web mail service (www.webmail.us) that organizes the feed folder heirarchy just below the mail folders so I see it all in one view.

The folder names turn bold when there’s new posts. I quickly scan down the list throughout the day — some blogs warrant immediate reading and some not so much.

Reply

Andy Brudtkuhl July 21, 2006 at 12:25 pm

I am surprised there have not been more applications integrating email and RSS. It would be great if Google integrated Google Reader with Gmail. All your information, aggregated to one place, on demand.

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