RSS Reset: Dump Your Feeds for a Month
Are you subscribing to too many blogs? Tired of the same old stuff flowing through your feeds? Think there's a better way? Well, I have just the idea for you. Join myself and others in the dumping of our RSS feeds for an entire month!
RSS Reset Month
Devised by myself and Phil Glockner of Scribkin, we recently talked for a few hours about the overflow of feeds and the repetition of certain topics and sites. With so much more out there to see, there were only a limited amount of ways to get to them without jeopardizing what was already amounting to information overload. This is where RSS Reset Month comes in. Here's the plan and list of rules:
- Keep feeds that track web site buzz (business-impacting).
- Allow feeds such as Disqus, Intense Debate or other low-volume feeds that are necessary for timely work decisions.
- Allow adding as many Google Reader Shared Items feeds as needed.
- Allow adding of aggregate, smart or keyword-filtered feeds such as RSSmeme FriendFeed Friends or TechMeme.
- Allow adding smaller site feeds. We set the upper limit for a small site to be 200 at the time of adding. This can be re-visited if the number is too small.
- Allowance process: If a site feed is so unique that it is not being covered by the processes defined above, an allowance will be made to subscribe to a direct feed to any site. The number of allowances can not exceed 10.
RSS Reset will be in effect for an entire month. Be sure to back up your original OPML file just in case you want to give it a try and decide not to continue at some point. Meanwhile, you can check out what Phil and I are adding on Toluu (Corvida, Phil). All the feeds added will also be conveniently "retweeted" on Twitter.
What's the Point?
Finding new content is hard enough. Finding new subscriptions while keeping up with your current subscriptions can be even tougher. Subscribing to more aggregation sites and smaller quality blogs will allow you to venture into unexplored territories, while giving the "little guys" a chance to be heard.
If you'd like to sign up for Toluu and join in on the fun, leave a comment down below.
Comments
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Love this idea, and I will be participating. I love the idea of re-discovering the blogs and people that are writing interesting things, not just the big guys. I am having a tough time getting through everything in my feed reader these days, and so actually reading every post instead of skimming will be great.
Caleb
Toluu
Posted by: Caleb Elston | June 1, 2008 6:46 PM
I use a different rss reader for low priority blogs. I use netvibes which I visit once a month to get updated.
Posted by: techmine | June 1, 2008 7:12 PM
I want to sign up in Toluu, especially after "share your opml" is over. But is private beta :(
Posted by: Thiago Freire | June 1, 2008 7:14 PM
Shameless plug, but it may help: http://feedego.com
Posted by: Karim | June 1, 2008 7:26 PM
Interesting. Will consider it, though I don't know if I want to give up my feeds for a month though....I'm slightly addicted.
And I would love to join Toluu if it is possible.
Posted by: herbertinc.livejournal.com
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June 1, 2008 7:49 PM
I am interested in a Toluu invite. I tried the invite part of the site but it gives an error....
Posted by: Sphinx
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June 1, 2008 8:34 PM
For those interested in a Toluu invite, there are three easy ways to get them:
1. Make sure you email is correct in your comment and Corvida should be able to send you an invite.
2. Email me at phil (at) scribkin dot com and I will send you an invite.
3. Head over to the FriendFeed Toluu or Invite room and ask for one:
http://friendfeed.com/rooms/invites
http://friendfeed.com/rooms/toluu
Posted by: J. Phil | June 1, 2008 9:45 PM
Please let me signup for Toluu!
BTW thanks for the live.yahoo P2P about Japanese startup company Q&A session ;-)
Posted by: satoko | June 1, 2008 11:18 PM
I'm also interested in a toluu invite. Thanks.
Posted by: Kris | June 1, 2008 11:30 PM
The aggregate and "web buzz" feeds are the ones that end up repeating each other the most. Digg, TechMeme, Read/Write Web, WebWare, TechCrunch etc. all repeat each other within an hour or less. There is very little difference between the content of each.
And there is the chance that if you unsubscribe from all those individual feeds you are cutting out the source of new, unique and interesting items. Aggregate feeds (which is what Read/Write Web is) depend on those individual productions. That is where you find the new stuff. You don't find new stuff on aggregate feeds.
Seems a dangerous idea to me, you might kill your cash cow.
But, it will be interesting to see the results :)
Posted by: Paul M. Watson | June 2, 2008 3:39 AM
I bet you couldn't *pay* Marshall to delete his feeds! Haha!
Posted by: Mark Schoneveld | June 2, 2008 7:50 AM
I would never participate in such a nutty scheme but I'm looking forward to your reports!
It did get me thinking about a step I need to take in reorganizing my bloglines feeds. So it's all to the good.
Posted by: Clyde Smith | June 2, 2008 8:26 AM
I turned off my feeds a long time ago for the most part. I use FeedBlitz to deliver daily emails of the few I absolutely don't want to miss, and I use Filtrbox (http://www.filtrbox.com) to monitor everything else via keywords.
I found seeing "725 unread articles" in my RSS reader every day to be pretty annoying and stopped using an RSS reader once we got Filtrbox up and running. Now I get a daily briefing email in the morning that contains about 50 articles, and I know I need to scan through them because they relate to things I care about.
I might miss a post from Dave Winer or Guy Kawaskai about their long weekend, but not if they are talking about "information overload".
Posted by: Ari Newman | June 2, 2008 9:09 AM
Very interesting idea. For those of you interested in finding some 'fresh' feeds to start reading instead of your current ones, I just recently wrote a blog post about the ultimate web marketing/web analytics RSS feed (it contains 10 great blog feeds).
Take a look, you guys should find it useful for new RSS feed ideas:
http://rich-page.com/web-analytics/the-ultimate-web-marketinganalytics-rss-feed-top-10-blogs/
Thanks!
Rich
Posted by: Rich Page | June 2, 2008 2:48 PM
Wow, when I first read this, I thought, "Are you mad? Give up my feeds?"
At second glance, it's a good idea. I looked through my Google Reader feeds and realized that quite a few were no longer useful -- many shiny things that I grabbed, but didn't drop after they ceased to be interesting or informative. Yet, I suppose they were always there in the full list, I just applied a manual 'ignore' filter and kept scrolling.
Thanks for the idea -- I'm taking the plunge, and I don't think I'm going to worry about the one-month limit. I'm looking forward to having a bit of my day back, even if it is just a few minutes. On this second go, I think I'll focus on what I want to take from the feeds and build my list around that, not just build it around whatever I can get my hands on and slap a tag on.
Posted by: Kirk Kittell | June 2, 2008 7:34 PM
A most interesting experiment. How're you finding it so far? I suspect shaking up our information consumption is a lot harder than we'd initially expect, but also something in which we'd see the value much faster than we'd expect, too. Patterns are the enemy of efficiency, oftentimes.
Don't know if I could bring myself to pare down quite that far, but I certainly understand the impetus. Threw in my two cents about the idea: An RSS reset isn’t the same as declaring bankruptcy (at least once I got over the "dumping" panic. :)
Posted by: Melanie Baker | June 10, 2008 5:38 AM
any Toluu invites left?
Posted by: Bill | June 21, 2008 5:25 PM
I would love a Toluu invite if you've still got any!!!
Posted by: Theresa White | June 27, 2008 8:32 AM
Would really love a Toluu invite! It's just what I've been looking for. Deeply appreciated!
Posted by: Pam Irick | June 29, 2008 8:23 PM