TechCrunch, Mashable, and the onslaught of bloggy volume
A piece on Mapping the Web called Why I Stopped Reading TechCrunch and Mashable led me to consider my own take on the top tier, high volume blog publishers and how I’m moderating my own information-intake of late.
To put it more bluntly, I know I’m not alone in being terrified of my RSS reader at times. Oh man, I have 1,400 unread stories? Not an uncommon thought. TechCrunch and Mashable are great places to catch up on the newest product releases, start-up doings, and other inside the social media and tech beltway kinds of stories, but keeping up with them can be a nearly full-time endeavor.
I’ve been using my RSS reader more selectively of late, as a place to browse around when I have the time rather than looking at it as a mountain must be climbed everyday. My day-to-day strategy is to use Techmeme and Twitter as the places where I can quickly get caught up on what’s going on in the tech and webby world while still allowing my community to provide me with the latest news, insider gossip and tips, and all the other juicy stuff that gets an online media cultist up in the morning.
There used to be a saying that if you simply read all of the stories published to The New York Times front page everyday, you’d have a pretty solid understanding of what was going on in the world. I think that you could do worse than scanning all of the headlines on Techmeme a few times a day for understanding what’s going on in tech and online media.
Having that basic understanding, Twitter can then be a place to get the really good stuff, quickly and easily. The key is to set up your Twitter profile to follow those people who are going to deliver the good stuff, which can take some time but I have found to be rather fun.
In fact, my thinking in recent days has become somewhat radical. When I find a new blog that I really like – such as yesterday when Louis Gray wrote about Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren’t (I was kindly included on this list, thank you Louis!) – I considered if it would be more beneficial to me to follow the Twitter profiles of the bloggers Louis wrote about rather than add their RSS feeds.
Has Twitter become the new RSS reader?
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April 8th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I definitely think Twitter is a great place to find quality posts, especially if you have the same ideals as those you are following.
I find that social media news sites and aggregators are losing their appeal. It seems that only the big names make the front page and overall quality has come down. The likelihood that the best blog post(s) on any given day are being produced by the top 5 tech blogs is extremely low. For that reason, it is important to broaden your horizon and be open to browsing elsewhere.
I tend to scan over my RSS reader and look for interesting headlines. If nothing catches my eye, I’ll resort to the few important blogs I read on a daily basis. These also tend to lead to good content…
-Aidan
April 8th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Eric - I find Tweets to be a good source of content that I either overlook in the Reader or just don’t subscribe to. Reader still has that persistent element to it, so I can find things when I’m ready. Twitter is good for when I’m watching tweets and discover something someone talks about.
BTW - we’re now linked over at Techmeme. http://www.techmeme.com/080408/h1330
Hutch
April 9th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Aidan, I definitely agree that casting the net wide is always the best way to get a sense of what’s going *and* get to the really good and quality stuff. On a daily basis, with limited time, it’s challenging to figure out how to do that. And the proliferation of social media platforms doesn’t necessarily make it any easier !
I’m also finding it interesting that social news sites like digg, reddit, and propeller *and* social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us didn’t really play into my thinking process while writing this article. I’ll browse all of those sites from time-to-time but they don’t really play into my own personal news/info gathering habits, at least not on a regular basis.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
bhc3, you bring up a great point. I do enjoy looking through my RSS reader for something of a “deeper” session when I have a little time / mental energy to really take in a massive amount of information.