But for me, and – I’d bet – a lot of other high volume feed consumers, the killer feature wouldn’t be finding and adding new feeds, but pruning old ones. I’m constantly adding a feed here and a feed there, for a variety of reasons: they wrote something particularly compelling, so-and-so told me they were worth reading, they’re in a role that I should be tracking, or maybe they just linked to me and looked at least moderately interesting. The little things, as they have a tendency to do, alas, added up until I found myself with an unread count in the 40K range post holiday break.
Despite the fact that I’d recognized the problem quite a while ago, I did little to fix it until this past week (not that I in any way consider it “fixed”). Why? Because none of the readers I’ve used, including my current choice, provide me with anything in the way of abstracted metrics on my feeds.
Given that OPML is an obvious underpinning for being able to do kill feeds for someone else in an automated fashion I nominate Alex Barnett. So Alex – what feeds should I unsubscribe from? Please nominate three from my blogroll. Feel free to let me know in private, in case you’re worried about doing “evil”… in public.
Actually my feedlist is so stupidly big I would also like to nominate Anne 2.0. Can you please tell me three you suggest I cut?
Of course, the unexpected consequence of the Feed Kill game is that in deciding what I should cull, Anne and Alex might find new feeds they are interested in. But that won’t be my problem…
So please Kill The Feed.
Dennis Howlett says:
March 9, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Try ListMixer – does it for you
Anne Zelenka says:
March 9, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Trying to get me to do your dirty work, hmmm? In your job, I’d think you’d want to follow as many feeds as possible–analysts, like journos, never know who might have that nugget of information that sets their work apart. So I’m doing you a favor by demurring.
I do like the idea of going through blogs on your blogroll though. Since you manage it through bloglines, that should be easy enough. Easy enough to get to the feeds that is. Good God, you follow a lot of blogs I’ve never heard of.