Is Your Feed Reader Becoming Boring?
Jan 13 2009 
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Kevin Muldoon posed a great question about how much we might rely on feed readers. Do we do it? I think the average blogger does.
However, my feed reader has been getting very boring to me lately so I rely less on it than I used to. Maybe it’s the content. Maybe it’s the interface of Google Reader. Maybe it’s the limited feature set; there isn’t much that you can do with a feed reader besides…well…read. Maybe I have ADD. Either way, it’s been boring for months now regardless of how many new feeds I subscribe to. So what do you do about it?
Evaluate The Problem
First, you figure out what’s making it so boring. Are you just sick of the interface and the limited amount of things you can do with your feed reader? Is the content that you’re subscribed to a bit…boring? Find out the source of the problem and then attempt to address it.
Problem Content
Sometimes you may just need to look for information elsewhere. Lately, FriendFeed, Twitter, & StumbleUpon have been the best places for me to find new content to check out. I’ve also started looking at trackbacks for content that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Technorati & Yacktrack are great for catching every trackback.
You have to branch out. Read the blogs that people are recommending, go where the content is, check out who your favorite bloggers are mentioning and linking to and not only will you not rely on your feed reader for news, you wouldn’t worry about becoming bored with it either.
Problem Programs
Google Reader isn’t the only RSS reader you know. In fact, if I didn’t have such a history with Google Reader, FeedDemon would be my choice of feed readers. Why? This feed reader has an absurd amount of features that makes feed reading that much more interesting. This is a program that makes me want to share content that isn’t even worth sharing because the features are just that friggin cool.
Don’t just go with the crowd. Explore the space of RSS readers and find which one really suits you and your needs.
What’s Your Problem?
Found the root of your problem? Good! Now tell me what will you do to make your feed reader more interesting?
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If you're on a Mac, I'd highly recommend you use NetNewsWire.
I've tried GoogleReader and haven't revisited. Too plain jane.
What do you like best about NetNewsWire?
Ah, hard to list all. The interface can be styled, it's clean and easy to scan but super informative. It shows me the feeds that haven't updated in a while with color coding. I have counts. I can easily mark all read or unmark. I can flag to save. I can tell it to disregard discarding old stuff. Big one: I can coordinate with my online NewsGator account to read same on my laptop, etc. I can make smart folders. The features page on the site talks about it.
Corvida, Thanks for the YackTrack mention! I am glad that you still use it and promote it. Personally, I do not think that your feed reader is the problem. I believe the content may be the problem. Whenever something interesting happens, you get several copies of the same story. Just look at the new Yahoo CEO story. Everyone seems to be covering it and some sites put out multiple stories. You just can't be interested in that much about one announcement.
Thanks for the nice mention of FeedDemon, Corvida!
You could also check out feedly. It is a firefox extension that uses GR as a backend, and lets you have more of a magazine style view. It also incorporates comments (from some blogs), sharing, friendfeed, twitter, digg, flickr, ect.
http://www.feedly.com/
Since leaving Bloglines quite some time ago, Google Reader has been what I really like. I must admit that the user interface IS quite blah, but the ease of use was all I needed, so I continued to use it. And within a few months of using it, I can't remember how, but I came across two Greasemonkey scripts that seemed liked winners. Helvetireader, and Show Feed Favicons. So I installed them, and I was very impressed. They made my Google Reader look a lot less blah.
With all that said, I think those little scripts are worth a try-out.
I hated getting several copies of the same post across blogs especially because it was pretty much the same article. It'd be nice if feed readers got some techmeme like linking. That way you could set an entire linked set as read.
I meant to mention feedly. I was just giving a general overview though. I kind of wanted my audience to branch out and do the research themselves.
The copycat content is definitely a huge factor. I wish all those stories could be conglomerated under one heading with a general overview of each story. Now that would be a time saver.
I like Regator. It's not really a feed reader, but I can still import my feeds and it helps me find new blogs if I get bored. Blogs that someone has hand-picked for quality.
Also, I'm a FriendFeed addict so I get a lot of stuff from there. :)
I use Google Reader for the semi-social part of it. Otherwise, I'd probably use NetNewsWire.
Btw.. Corvida… You might want to check your FeedDeamon link. It goes to a 404 on your site.
-Adam
Yes the social part has me hooked in too.
Fixed the link! Thanks for pointing it out.
No problem.
Feel free to e-mail me if you want my google name to see my shared stuff.
-Adam
Corvida,
I think it's the style of presentation. I've tried lots of RSS readers (mac), and the static style of presentation doesn't work for me – it's too hierarchical, keeps me in a rigid reading pattern, and forces me to do more work to find new content from unexpected sources.
this isn't for everyone, but i can't live without Snackr. It's a news-ticker style feed reader that's synced to my Google Reader account, and it helps me discover new stuff every day.
anytime i come across an interesting blog, i subscribe to it with GR. i keep snackr open all the time (i'm currently pushing over 200 feeds now) and it scrolls new items from a random selection of blogs across the bottom of my screen. i see more stuff from blogs i wouldn't usually see, and when i come across good stuff i'll open the post in my browser.
Snackr requires Adobe Air, and some people complain about memory usage, but as a change of pace i'd highly recommend it
I'm aware of Snackr. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about it on ReadWriteWeb. It's a great tool, but I'm not much of a ticker person myself to be honest. It takes up to much screen estate for me.
I agree though that the presentation manner could definitely play a role in the “boringness” of it all. Google Reader isn't the best for finding new content. Feedly would probably be better.
I'm aware of Snackr. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about it on ReadWriteWeb. It's a great tool, but I'm not much of a ticker person myself to be honest. It takes up to much screen estate for me.
I agree though that the presentation manner could definitely play a role in the “boringness” of it all. Google Reader isn't the best for finding new content. Feedly would probably be better.
I'm aware of Snackr. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about it on ReadWriteWeb. It's a great tool, but I'm not much of a ticker person myself to be honest. It takes up to much screen estate for me.
I agree though that the presentation manner could definitely play a role in the “boringness” of it all. Google Reader isn't the best for finding new content. Feedly would probably be better.