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The demerits of RSS
Is RSS going mainstream?
I've had my RA set up this technology for me but I still don't appreciate it or even use it. First, I like the look of individual blog pages. More importantly, reading blogs for me is a matter of mood. Right now I feel like reading, say Jacqueline Passey rather than EconBrowser, or vice versa, and I don't want all the new posts thrust in front of my nose at the same time. I also fear that ongoing use of RSS would lead to reading inflation; I would add new blogs to my feed because it is easy to do so, but encounter the intransitivity of indifference. I would end up overloaded.
My current reading method "by hand" takes more time, but hey reading blogs is fun and it should stay fun at the margin. Who wants to be satiated in liquidity? My current method also brings more discipline. Do you all have thoughts on this matter?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 26, 2007 at 07:19 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
RSS + Bloglines is just a good way to organize the blogs I visit, and makes it less tedious than scrolling through hundreds of bookmarks. Plus, not every new blog post on every blog is worth reading. RSS allows you to quickly filter out the uninteresting so you can get to the interesting.
Posted by: Urstoff at Jan 26, 2007 7:54:31 AM
I agree -- I don't want my entries pushed out at me. I don't visit all blogs and sites with the same frequency, and I don't necessarily read just the newest items when I do visit. And I'm not sure there's really a meaningful time difference (navigating to and loading a blog page takes a couple of seconds, maybe).
Posted by: Slocum at Jan 26, 2007 8:00:37 AM
Set your RA to show headlines only and, here's the difficult part, LEARN TO EDIT RUTHLESSLY.
I follow far to many blogs and news services to check each individually; Google Reader lets me do it automatically.
I routinely open it up to 100+ posts. Of those I actually open 15% to 20% to read a few lines more, still in my RA. Of those, I only go to the posters Blog and read the entire post, half the time. Another 10% goes into my "interesting and worth further research" file,and even at that it gets out of hand.
Total time, less than an hour.
Keeping up with the flow of information on the internet is impossible. My RA is the only thing that keeps me resonably current.
Posted by: Weldon MacDonald at Jan 26, 2007 8:13:03 AM
I don't use RSS. I guess I'm old school in that I have numerous blogs bookmarked on my computers. Like Tyler, I base what I read on what I feel like reading at the particular moment. So I poke around here and there - going where the spirit leads me.
Posted by: Phil at Jan 26, 2007 8:13:05 AM
I use Google Reader to keep up with this blog and several others. More importantly, it allows me to skim headlines for work-related news so I can keep up with the software development industry. If I want to read this blog alone I can just click on the MR feed and I'm good to go. No loaded images, extremely streamlined... it works for me.
Posted by: Brian at Jan 26, 2007 8:14:47 AM
"I also fear that ongoing use of RSS would lead to reading inflation; I would add new blogs to my feed because it is easy to do so, but encounter the intransitivity of indifference. I would end up overloaded."
This is what I most feared about transfering to Google Reader and RSS over your traditional blog reading method. It was true for a while, but you find a balance. RSS now helps me be more effective.
Posted by: Ross Parker at Jan 26, 2007 8:30:15 AM
When I first heard someone describe the concept of a blog reader to me, back in 02, I was deeply skeptical, for exactly the reasons you outlined.
However, having used Bloglines for 2+ years now, I would hate to go back.
1) You can organize your feeds into conceptual groups, and only read the groups that are interesting at a given time.
2) You will experience feed inflation, but because the process is far more efficient, it cancels out.
You don't believe me on #2. Well, those two seconds that you load each feed - how many feeds do you have? 30? So that's 1 minute. I can tell you exactly which feeds have new stuff and which ones don't in that first 2 seconds. I can quickly skim the headers and find out which ones are interesting over the rest of the minute. So by the time it takes you just to load each of the pages, I've already found all the interesting posts, and using firefox, opened each of them up in new tabs for me to look at later.
Posted by: jb at Jan 26, 2007 8:32:07 AM
I agree about the liquidity-kills-fun line.
I purchase my pistachios in shells, and not because of the price difference.
Posted by: Paul at Jan 26, 2007 8:33:06 AM
One thought only: I wouldn't have read this post if it wasn't for RSS.
Having a 100+ blogs in Bloglines allows me to follow what's going on in many unrelated subjects, something that would be impossible by hand. Which doesn't mean there aren't a couple quality posts per day that get all my attention!
Posted by: Al at Jan 26, 2007 8:42:45 AM
There's some serious advantages to feed readers.
First, they automate the parts that no one likes -- remembering what sites to visit, remembering what posts are new, etc.
Second, those of us browsing at work can maximize the bang for the buck -- go to Google Reader and hit a hundred sites quickly.
Third, one consistent interface minimizes the cognitive dissonance that you'd get by jumping from site to site.
Fourth, not every site posts on a regular schedule, and some of the best might go weeks between posts. I still get to follow them without growing bored waiting for a new post.
Posted by: Pat at Jan 26, 2007 8:49:42 AM
One thought only: I wouldn't have read this post if it wasn't for RSS.
Having a 100+ blogs in Bloglines allows me to follow what's going on in many unrelated subjects, something that would be impossible by hand. Which doesn't mean there aren't a couple quality posts per day that get all my attention!
Posted by: Al at Jan 26, 2007 8:51:23 AM
Three points:
- Some people are on the Internet to monitor the media and the blogs about some keyword(s) of interest ---in my case, "prediction markets".
- Using a feed reader is interesting because it brings all the blog posts in one place ---my feed reader.
- Once that, it's easier to scan rapidly all these blog posts and spot the ones that are about my keyword(s).
I explain it all in the blog post I have written on the topic of RSS, responding to Tyler Cowen. Its URL is under my name, above.
Posted by: Chris Masse at Jan 26, 2007 9:00:25 AM
Why would anyone want to read Jacqueline Passey, for any reason, in any form?
Posted by: Matt at Jan 26, 2007 9:54:54 AM
there are several readers (including Bloglines) which don't push new entries to the top, but let you organize each site separately.
This lets you pick which blog to read and which ones have new entries.
I didn't like the "everything in one bucket" approach to RSS either.
Posted by: Chris at Jan 26, 2007 10:15:38 AM
A blog reader (Google Reader) has two big benefits for me:
Aggregation - I regularly use three different computers. Maintaining bookmarks across three computers would be awful.
Notification - RSS is most useful for keeping track of sites that are not blogs. I do read MR in my blog reader, but there's not a big difference between doing that and visiting the site itself. However, I keep track of articles on other sites that aren't blogs (i.e., sites that aren't updated every day). The reader tells me when there is new content, so I don't have to keep checking.
Filtering can also be handy. If you are interested in certain aspects of a blog/site, but not others, readers can filter out the stuff you don't care about.
Posted by: Trieu Truong at Jan 26, 2007 10:21:50 AM
A music analogy may be appropriate: listen to a full-length CD or a collection of favorite songs by various artists. The IPod method has captured the imagination of a generation, it appears, and I expect RSS to follow suit. For younger readers in particular, RSS will soon be (or already is) the preferred method of delivery.
Posted by: blink at Jan 26, 2007 10:23:24 AM
Umm ... what is an RA?
Posted by: Joe at Jan 26, 2007 10:33:52 AM
An RA is a supreme piece of information technology. One single RA takes the work of at least 1 full-time professor and about 4 to 5 years of preparation. For some reason, even with all this modern whizz-bang technology, RA's still have to be hand crafted. And half of the time the process doesn't work right and instead of building an RA, you get a TA. Administrators love TA's, because they can pick up the slack of professors who usually are all R and no T.
Contrast RA with a PA, who usually requires no prep apart from gym sessions.
Posted by: Josh Reich at Jan 26, 2007 10:51:42 AM
RSS is invaluable. (For one thing, you would have found all the good arguments in favor of privatizing the Illinois lottery back on Tuesday :-) )
But more to the point, it's vastly more efficient, certainly than email, which I assume is the source of a lot of your information. And it's just as easy to read Palley from a newsreader as it is on the web. Easier, actually. You don't need to mix up your feeds -- I certainly don't.
Posted by: Felix at Jan 26, 2007 11:04:00 AM
Hardly anyone uses RSS, so it doesn't matter.
Posted by: winterspeak at Jan 26, 2007 11:06:50 AM
One benefit I like of RSS, is when a blog goes all Lazarus on me. The blogger quit for some long period and normally I would eventually quit going to it. Now, I'm pleasantly surprise when they reappear in my box (Statastic.com was like this)
Posted by: vc at Jan 26, 2007 11:15:20 AM
NB -- you can use Thunderbird to solve the problem you note. There are pros and cons either way, but I feel like I have been x2 as productive since I started using Thunderbird to read blogs by RSS. The main advantage is that instead of clickin' around until god knows when, I can immediately see whether there are any new blog posts, NYT articles, or other articles.
Posted by: ioae at Jan 26, 2007 11:21:44 AM
Tyler, Google Reader is wonderful. If you want to read only Jacqueline, you only read Jacqueline. If I am not in the mood to read a blog that I have subscribed to, I just let it mellow, while still reading the other ones. Furthermore, you can mark items as read at school and they will be marked as read at home as well. You do miss out on the design of the blog, at least until you click through to an item to make a comment.
If you want to set it up, let me know; I am usually 50 feet away.
Posted by: Eli at Jan 26, 2007 11:29:30 AM
To "IOAE":
- I have seen a poll on RSS readers recently (at Write/Read Web, I believe), and it says that most advanced people prefer using a Web-based feed reader (Google Reader, Bloglines) as opposed to PC-based feed readers (such as IE7, which prompted Tyler Cowen to blog about RSS today).
- And, sorry to pierce your bubble, and all that said with all due respect to you, ThunderBird came at 1%.
Posted by: Midas Oracle at Jan 26, 2007 11:32:35 AM
ioae: I've tried using Thunderbird, but I usually just end up seeing two monitors, and the place where I acquire it has a questionable clientele.
Re: the RSS scene: most blogs I visit are based on mood. I'll visit a series of econ blogs, or sports blogs, or political commentary blogs, &c., based on what I feel like reading. There are very few blogs (this one being an exception) that I read every day, despite the fact that I do a lot of blog reading.
It seems to me that RSS would be good for people that want to be "in the know," whereas I don't mind if I read a post a few days late; I'd rather read a series of similar posts at one time.
Of course, this is from someone who only acquired a cell phone in the past week, and doesn't have a blog of his own. I'm practically a Mennonite.
Posted by: Ned at Jan 26, 2007 11:36:01 AM
