This post is the heavily edited version of something I sent to an email discussion group:
Not counting news and comics, I follow about ninety different blogs. It crossed my mind for the first time that this may not be normal. Will I suffer a nervous breakdown the next time our broadband connection drops? Will Jana have to check me in to the Andrew Sullivan Blog Rehabilitation Clinic?
Here’s how I manage my addiction daily reading:
I subscribe to rss feeds through Google Reader. If a blog or site doesn’t have a feed, I don’t keep up with it. When I first started using the Reader, I went subscription happy. I peaked in the high 100s, decided that was unmanageable, and began paring back. The Reader helps by keeping track of which ones haven’t updated for a while and which ones you have a tendency to skip. I’ve stabilized now. Occasionally I drop one or add another.
Everything is grouped into about a dozen categories, including my “daily” folder (must reads), graphic design, science, religion, Mormon, Quaker, skeptic. I have a tag for my friends and another one for SF writers who blog. According to the “personal trends” calculated by Google Reader, I average about 500 updates each day. How do I get through them all? Here’s my strategy:
- 15+ core blogs: I read almost every post and occasionally contribute (these include my three primary communities: Mormon feminists, New Order Mormons, and the Mind on Fire community). Right now I feel like a leech–I read all of the wonderful blogs in the MoF community, but don’t comment near as much as I should…maybe Google can help me manage my contributions?
- Another dozen or so blogs: I read most posts, but almost never comment (these are mostly political and science blogs, including Andrew Sullivan and Pharyngula).
- Another 10-15 blogs: I read selectively–posts by particular authors (only Amanda Marcotte’s at the feminist group blog, Pandagon) or only the ones on particular topics (I read all the political but ignore all the math posts at Alon Levy’s Abstract Nonsense).
- The rest have short posts (like software or design tips from Lifehacker), annotated links, update infrequently, belong to family and friends, or are ones I’m just checking out on a trial basis.
I read short posts on the spot, but generally save longer ones for when I have time, which may come days after they’re posted. I often feel like the conversation has passed when I finally do get around to reading them.
To sum up my blog management, I’m deliberately overloaded, blog-wise. Family, work and school intrude on my precious blog-reading time. I’ve also been known to read unclickable material that is printed on the dried, pulpy remnants of Oregon forests. This means that I’m continually yelling at my Google Reader. I come back from lunch (assuming I didn’t spend it reading blogs) and shout, “What! Another 55 posts?” And then I quickly cull half, glance at the rest, and star about a dozen for reading in the evening. I click open a handful into tabs for possible blogging material.
So tell me–are you a fellow addict? How do you make sure you get your daily fix with overdosing?
37 responses so far ↓
1 John White // Feb 7, 2007 at 6:17 am
I just had the blog-reading equivalent of feeling the first Strawberry Ripple buzz, then seeing a bum passed out in the alley from drinking the same thing.
I feel dirty.
My high volume sites with low signal/noise ratio are MetaFilter and Slashdot. I skim most TUAW posts. Wired and Slate are my main source of news. My “friend” blogs are 100% read, and are highest priority, even if I star for later reading (like for MoF bookgroup posts which I don’t want to contaminate my own reactions with).
My toughest feed is NPR’s “Fresh Air,” because it really should be a podcast. I have to parse it for interest then listen to a Real-Audio track if it looks interesting. I don’t do it that often, compared to when I listened to it on the radio.
Fast, entertaining blogs are in the mix there somewhere: Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke, the Twenty Four advertisement blog (striking artwork and design), Starbucks Gossip, and Violent Acres.
Maybe I need a 12-step program.
2 C. L. Hanson // Feb 7, 2007 at 6:50 am
I read approximately that many blogs as well.
Actually, I really should do the whole google/rss feed thing — I assume it’s not too hard.
My current system is to play the “surprise me” game of just randomly picking blogs from my sidebar to read at any given sitting. But this means get in late on a lot of interesting discussions…
3 Bonny // Feb 7, 2007 at 8:07 am
I read a lot of blogs and currently have no way of tracking them or getting updates regarding when something new has been posted on the site.
This means that I visit these same 20-25 blogs several (and I mean several) times a day, usually during the work day, which I am not proud to say, probably cuts down on my production just a little bit. Also it scares me that if people have site trackers they might think I am a little bit creepy because I visit there site say maybe 20 times a day. Hmmm…
I am pretty consistently late to work because of reading and our responding to other people’s blogs and then when I get to work I usually spend the first 15 minutes checking out more or posting my own because I didn’t have time at home (even though I got up early to do it). Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious I have a problem. I would expand more, but I am already running late to work.
4 Bored in Vernal // Feb 7, 2007 at 8:44 am
Wow, my family accuses me of being addicted to blogging–maybe they should read this thread! I read a few blogs every day (Mind on Fire is one of them!) Then I check about 10 or so blogs that are on my sidebar to see if anything is happening–most of them don’t post every day, so this doesn’t take long. I go ldsblogs.org and scan this aggregator to see if there is anything that looks interesting. Sometimes I’ll click around on people’s links. I’m home all morning, so I will usually read blogs between taking a shower, doing laundry, cleaning up, paying bills, etc. In the evening I check the blogs that looked interesting that morning or the ones I commented on. I also help a lot of people with genealogy so a lot of my time is spent on the computer catching up with that.
I feel like John in that I like to think about the posts and sometimes I would like to comment, but feel the discussion has moved on. I am still thinking a lot about the post here at mof about the temple, and have much more to say about that subject. Maybe I will get around to posting it and maybe not.
5 Miko // Feb 7, 2007 at 9:03 am
oh, wow. Speaking as a card-carrying member of the Internet Generation, I’ve got nothing on you guys. I have 29 items in my “daily” folder, which opens in Safari tabs. Of that, 11 are blogs (the rest, cartoons) 2 of which are friends who update infrequently, so I check in and close the tab. One of them is MoF. One, I guess, is really a zine. Three I never comment on. The remaining four I comment infrequently but read every post (even the ass-long ones). Then, I have “blogs” which is a folder I rarely check but which includes some of the blogs I’ve been linked to by other ppl but don’t find fascinating on a daily basis. There are 9 in there.
6 John White // Feb 7, 2007 at 9:24 am
C.L. Hanson, Bonny: Yes, sounds like both of you should be using Google Reader. Why aren’t you?
I have to admit not using it until … John … showed … me … how …
John’s my Strawberry Ripple dealer, apparently.
7 Jeff // Feb 7, 2007 at 9:37 am
I feel much better about my blogging habits now. I thought that I read way too much. I read about 10 blogs pretty regularly (MonF is one of my staples), and I link to them from my blog to show the love. I use the netvibes newsreader to manage the load, and I seldom comment unless something is really interesting.
I tried to read a lot more, and I realized that all I did was read blogs, often neglecting my family and my writing to do so. I’ve scaled back. I try to write a post a day on my blog now; however, I only write real substantive, long posts about once a week. The others are more just for fun.
8 John White // Feb 7, 2007 at 10:28 am
Miko: Bookmarked tabs? How quaint! Do you keep any site URLs on papyrus? Written with a goose-feather quill?
9 Andy J. // Feb 7, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Blog management hasn’t been a problem for me yet, though I’m sure the potential exists. I don’t consistently blog myself, which I think is probably one of the reasons why I haven’t become an addict.
10 John Remy // Feb 7, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Okay, now you’ve all got this image of me as a drooling Blog-head (and Chanson too, apparently) :P. Just so you know, I do spend time with my kids (we blog together…just kidding), I’m a straight-A student in my grad program, and I think that I’m viewed as a competent programmer and manager at work. What I do seem to give up is sleep. Plus I do weird things like reading blog posts on my Treo while walking/jogging in the early morning.
Chanson, one of the things I have lost is the spontaneity of random links. I need to work those back in to my ‘routine.’
I just want you all to know that none of you are blameless. You’re all enablers.
11 Miko // Feb 7, 2007 at 5:34 pm
John W.: I’ve not written with a(n eagle) feather quill in many years…not sure where it got to. I’ve also never found papyrus of sufficient quality for my uses. I do, however, have a few Mont Blancs, Watermen (Watermans?), Pelikans, &c. along with a seal that keep me securely in the middle ages, regardless of my computational abilities. Anyone knows where I can get a custom-made seal (the R is no longer suiting my purposes), lemmie know
et al. Google was but little help for this: what the heck is Strawberry Ripple?! …and where can I find some?
12 John // Feb 7, 2007 at 6:53 pm
One more little update: I watched my blog-filtering throughout the day, and the signal to noise ratio is very,very high. I save about one in ten posts for later reading, and I know that I cull many of those when I get around to them.
I guess outside of my core loyalties (friends, communities and favorite celebrity bloggers), I’m only letting the real gems through. For example, Andrew Sullivan had twenty five freaking posts today (so far). I dumped all of them. I’m half tempted to unsubscribe to him altogether, but I get one or two incredible links from him each week that seem to make the filtering worthwhile. For now.
13 Bored in Vernal // Feb 7, 2007 at 7:15 pm
What an animal.
14 John White // Feb 7, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Miko:
I know that you need custom seals for lots of things (corporations, professional marks, etc). Have you looked?
Strawberry Ripple is my brain’s mashup of Boone’s Straberry Hill and the now-defunct Ripple brand of wine. More info at Bumwine:
http://www.bumwine.com/others.html
( best logo ever )
15 Kaimi // Feb 7, 2007 at 10:23 pm
I ought to set something like that up. I used bloglines a while back, but have been mostly on my own for a while.
My problem is that I lose track of comments. I follow a link to a link to a blog, and make a comment. And then forget it. I need a good way to keep track of conversations I’m having. I wonder how many conversation orphans I’ve created over the years?
(Hopefully, I don’t orphan this conversation too.)
16 Kaimi // Feb 7, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Also - do you put the comments RSS into google reader, too? I don’t know if that would be overdoing it.
17 John // Feb 7, 2007 at 11:26 pm
I don’t like comments feeds because they mash together all of the comments from all of the posts on a blog, in comment order. There are comment trackers out there–I used one for awhile that inserted a Greasemonkey script into any blog you navigated to. It tracked all of my conversations in one place, but I got rid of it because it was buggy.
I’m tempted to try something like it again though.
18 John White // Feb 7, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Kami: If I comment on a blog that I don’t subscribe to the comments of, I might subscribe to the comment feed for that specific post (if the site supports that). I might put that in a specific folder which I routinely cull the subscriptions from.
I subscribe to MoF comments, and the comments feeds for most of my friends’ sites. And no, I don’t find it that over-the-top.
Especially helpful for my own site.
19 C. L. Hanson // Feb 8, 2007 at 1:17 am
Okay, I just configured my Google blog-addiction-enabler!!!
True, it’s quite convenient…
20 Miko // Feb 8, 2007 at 8:35 am
Kaimi: this is one of the few sites I comment on; I generally don\’t even read. comments. They get too many too fast &, IMHO, rarely are substantive.
John W.: corporate wax seals? I know I can get an embosser for pretty cheap…
21 John White // Feb 8, 2007 at 9:08 am
Miko: Oh, wax seals? Then no. You might need a specialty shop or resort to the internet.
22 Miko // Feb 8, 2007 at 11:34 am
and thanx for the Ripple info
I’ll keep an eye out for it
23 pilgrimgirl // Feb 10, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I recently converted to google reader after being harrassed by Johns R&W for awhile. It’s really changed my habits. I spend far less time clicking on bookmarks in my browser and more time actually _reading_ the posts.
I subscribe to comments feeds on a few of my fav blogs (like MoF). I have comment feed on my blog but I hate that it is always running about 12 hours slow. Bleh.
24 nee // Feb 10, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Maybe I should try google reader… or maybe not. All the ones I read (or rather used to read) are on one of my “my yahoo” pages as rss feeds but I rarely go there. So really, most of the time the only blogs I read are the ones on my mind. Much like Willie Nelson’s women, you’re always on my mind (on fire) so I usually end up here daily if not at least a few times a week.
There’s really only a handful I read every week. Make it 2 handfuls fro who I even have the RSS feeds set up for yet don’t manage to read anyway. I can count them all on my fingers.
I do spend a hella lot of time online but it’s usually at Find a Grave, Flickr, Upcoming.org, Ma.gnolia, Yahoo News, and Wikipedia (where I can and sometimes do get lost for hours).
25 nee // Feb 10, 2007 at 11:12 pm
….several hours later…
Now that I’ve moved all my rss feeds I wasn’t reading out of “my yahoo” an onto google reader I’m finding it can streamline my flickr viewing with feeds as well and so hey, why not add more feeds and so then hey what about this and ooh what about that and ooo shiny objects link quick!
MoF is my enabler.
26 John // Feb 10, 2007 at 11:44 pm
The Internet encourages extended networks of junkies!
27 Miko // Feb 11, 2007 at 10:23 am
Find a Grave…? What do you do there? Okay, besides the obvious…whose graves are you looking for?
28 nee // Feb 11, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Well, from the findagrave homepage you can search for famous graves by name/location/claim to fame, etc. You can also search for regular folks.
Generally, I don’t search for records, although I have looked to see who’s famous and buried around here. Anne Ramsey of “Throw Mama from the Train” and “The Goonies” fame is buried in a huge cemetery nearby which I visit often.
What I do is add records to create online memorials for family, friends, and a heck of a lot strangers. I photograph headstones and either add them to existing memorials if one is already created or I create the memorial and add the headstone picture. At these virtual memorials, people can leave “virtual flowers” and also upload photos they may have of that person. It’s a cheap hobby. I wander around cemeteries and take pics of headstones and upload ‘em. Since last May, I’ve created created nearly 900 memorials and uploaded over a thousand photos.
I’m also a photo volunteer. If someone requests a photo of a headstone in the area, I get an email. I can find it, I take a pic and upload it for them. I also take pictures of cemetery entrances for the main cemetery pages.
Basically, findagrave is an online collection of not only cemeteries worldwide but anyone who’s passed away. There’s memorials for people with ashes scattered at sea, etc. You can even create a memorial for a pet. I saw the coolest one last week - a guy made his memorial while he was still alive and had uploaded pics of himself smiling next to his headstone and wrote his own bio. He died and evidently left someone instructions w/ his password to update the memorial. Sounded like a fun guy to know.
Um, so yeah, that’s my long winded explaination of findagrave. There’s also discussion boards there with all the drama that comes with those. heh.
29 Miko // Feb 13, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Thank you for the explanation of findagrave. It sounds a lot more normal than when I brought it up on Safari.
So…I read sewing blogs, but I’m on the fence about whether I should start one. Currently, I just have a page of pictures of my sewing projects. I don’t know where in this that fits, but it seems to, somehow.
30 pilgrimgirl // Feb 13, 2007 at 11:19 pm
You sew, Miko? What do you sew? What’s the URL of your project page?
31 Miko // Feb 14, 2007 at 8:48 am
:-p I sew all kinds of stuff. I sewed a really kickass heart-shaped pot holder for Valentine’s a few years ago but never took a picture
sadness. (It was a present). There are also a bunch of things around my house that I sewed. Tablecloths, pillowcases, whatnot. Currently I’m working on a purse. This is my site, but I don’t have many things up, yet.
32 John Remy // Feb 16, 2007 at 9:35 am
Miko, I just looked at your sewing page. I knew you were multi-talented, but…wow!
Davis, very clever. It seems (although I can only base this on what you expressed in your comments) that we have different experiences regarding the power of communication and ideas (e.g., blogging) to transform people and create relationships (religions seem to have a good grasp of this).
Plus, I speed-read. I can assure you that I have plenty of time left for “useful” pursuits. Thank you for your concern.
33 John Remy // Feb 16, 2007 at 10:17 am
Um, Davis…do you often write epitaphs for living strangers?
34 nee // Feb 16, 2007 at 11:29 am
Davis, I have definitely encountered the type of people/scenarios of which you speak. In general, though, those seem more like complainers or puffed up blowhards, neither of which is John.
FWIW, I have an impression of the Remys as people who share philosophies and ideas because of the very reason that they are ideas which do motivate them to action. As such, it inspires me and I am sure others to consider those same principles and apply them. Over the last several months I’ve found this place to be anything but a passive highbrow hangout.
To top it off, as bloody brilliant as the Remys and Miko and others here are, they’re humble about it, too. They rock in the best way and would probably deny it. That’s what’s so cool.
35 John // Feb 16, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Nee, thank you. I am encouraged.
If MoF has been successful in any way, it’s found in the caliber of people who choose to hang out here–you all are intelligent, sensitive, compassionate, thoughtful, articulate, motivated people. I feel like it’s just one station in an interlocking Metro of spiritual-intellectual goodness.
Plus you all are forthright enough that if we did start to get uppity, you’d smack us back down.
36 John White // Feb 17, 2007 at 7:19 am
Davis:
Huh. Gonna have to think about that one.
37 Miko // Feb 17, 2007 at 9:37 am
nee: I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of being humble…I think hanging out here has been good for me!
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