I almost got feed fatigue (does anyone use that expression?) yesterday. It was my first day back at work, and it consisted solely of answering e-mails and scanning my RSS feeds, which amassed to 1,000+ stories, which in reality was more like 10,000+ stories!
Now, I’m a harsh RSS user. If I don’t find myself following up on posts in a subscription, I cancel it. Having too many feeds in the feed reader is just stressful. However, I still have a fair amount of sources, so they got piled up over the holidays.
Three things struck me, when scanning the feeds.
- I clicked through more often on partial feeds.
- Images does work in feeds as well, not just in post.
- It sucks to read in a feed reader, but it sucks even more to read in an ugly designed site.
Mayhap not the most stunning revelations of 2008, but nevertheless, they were painfully obvious when I had to handle so much content.
I prefer my feeds like I prefer my content listings, with read more links and images to lighten them up. In other words, I don’t want to read 50 paragraphs in my feed reader, more like five and then if I’m hooked I’ll click through. Add an image and you’re more likely to succeed.
How do you prefer your feeds?
Originally posted on January 9, 2008 @ 1:32 am