The Reason I Prefer Browsing To Reading Feeds

I've said a number of times that although I use several feed readers, I don't really use any of them on a regular basis. I use them primarily as a place to bookmark/store/database the blogs I like.  Most of the blogs I read on a regular basis are listed on the right sidebar in my blogroll.

But mostly I like to follow links around the blog world. The links I like to follow can be in blog posts, delicious tags, digg, delicious popular, memorandum, reddit, tailrank, or any other aggregator that I may decide to use at that point in time.

I also find lots of blog posts by following the links in the comments and track backs of my blog and technorati/google/icerocket tracking of links to my blog.

I found a new blog today from a comment to my blog called Chartreuse (BETA) that I like.  It's now on my blogroll.

Here's a paragraph from a post on Chartreuse that I like because it explains why I read blogs the way I do and why I avoid feed readers for the most part:

I read a lot of blogs. Really. Most of them suck, (like this one.) What I really like to do is discover new blogs. Discover new voices. That’s where the coolness is in blogs. Finding someone with something new to say. It’s hard to do because people don’t add new people to blogrolls or they fill it with people everyone already know. That sucks.The A list is not really an A list to cool people. It’s an ignore list. People will link to them anyway. And you know an A-lister sucks when he doesn’t include links to anybody else. No blogroll is an arrogance. Do you really think we think you don’t read anyone else? Be like us regular folks and give a little love to those you read. And change it once a month.

I agree with most of this, except that my blogroll is a list of the blogs I read most.  If someone has stayed on there for the past 2 1/2 years (like Seth Godin), then it means I still read them as much as I did back then. I think they should stay on.

Comments

[Dave]

Have you tried the feed aggregator SharpReader?

I'm using it right now as I type this comment. It's essentially like Outlook or any other modern email program, insofar that a list of all your feeds appears to the left. When you click on a give feed (say this one), you see a list of all the posts in the top right. Below that is an embedded browser, through which you can follow all the links to your heart's content.

I find it extremely efficient.
More info here.

[Ken King]

I look at it the other way - using a feed reader (NetNewsWire) allows me to efficiently keep up with the blogs that I've already found and subscribed to, giving me more time to discover new ones than I'd have if I read them all in a web browser.

When I see a link to another blog that seems interesting, I open the page up in a browser window. Some of these discoveries blow me away and become subscriptions in NNW immediately, but most get subjected to the radar screen test - if I follow links to the blog more than twice, I add them to my subscription list.

[Darren Fast]

Interesting perspective. I found I needed to use an aggregator to keep me organized. The way I have managed this is to start my reading with bloglines which lets me feed my blogroll to my blog without updating my blogroll manually. That way, as I follow the links and comments, I can simply add the new blogs to my blogroll. And if I find that I'm not reading or not interested in the feed anymore, it's easy to delete.

PS. I have no connection to bloglines other than as a satisfied user.

[Girish Warrier]

The 'thing' with blogs is that spark of curiosity...like what does the blog talk about today?? But that's just me...I like browsing and reading blogs, because there is that instant of anticipation about the content. I guess that is just what I love about browsing blogs, the sense of 'what's it about today'?
Of course feeds help to keep it organized, but I want see the blog right there...with material for me to chew on for the day.

[Steve]

It would be interesting if our feed readers could track what we read most and then export that to a daily changing blog roll or something.

[Noam Lovinsky]

It's all about offline reading for me and Onfolio does a great job of it.

[chartreuse]

Glad someone besides me likes my site! Thank you very much for the kind words.

On the subject of blogrolls. I find it frustrating that peoples blogrolls don't change too often. As one of the commentors above said (Girish Warrier)"that spark of curiosity...like what does the blog talk about today??" is what's interesting.

I agree with that and think it's cool.

RSS feeds? I'm just learning about those...

[Adam Elend]

I'm a aggregator reader - it's absolutely the only way I'll read the blogs I like regularly. RSS is a critical part of my web experience. But I also read my mail on an aggregator, and many people go to the web for that too.

Your initial description of your blog reading behavior, jumping from link to link, etc. is interesting from a web marketing perspective. I've been wondering if, as the RSS'ed web evolves, the average user will spend less and less time exploring, and more time on a few sites, with their information coming to them. If so, I can envision ecommerce and traffic based sites struggling to lure customers out of their shell and out into cyberspace, just as they currently struggle to lure customers away from their computers and out to their brick and mortars.

On the other hand, if your exploring behavior continues to be the norm (or at least a norm) then the current push to distribute rich content through rss podcasts and destination viewing (like broadband channels) is probably off the mark. Brightcove and others who are pushing a syndication model, content you find along your web journeys (even served up like ads, based on context and behavior), and experience enhancing content (where the traffic already exists) seem like more promising models.

How does your blog viewing behavior translate to rich media viewing?

[Greg]

I agree with you, Fred. Aggregators get an A for efficiency, but sometimes I just want to browse around and enjoy photos and design. I blogged about it at the link below, but trackback isn't showing up. Thanks.

[Brian Breslin]

This is great, my blog got double mentioned (once on chartreuse's original post, and now on the reference!). Thanks fred and Chartreuse .
p.s. i like browsing over feedreading only because i understand the lengths some bloggers go into the presentation of their content, and feel i get more out of the conversation using said method over the feedreaders.

[Jason Boog]

I really, really appreciate your democratic approach to surfing. I love to surf around the comments sections of my favorite blogs, exploring the lesser-known sites of people that like the same big sites that I do.

While I use Bloglines to keep my stable of favorite blogs together, too often my headlines all start to sound the same. By comment surfing my favorite blogs, I've found countless new blogs with fresh ideas about my topic for the week.