Matthew’s post just below this one got me thinking this morning. I don’t use a news/RSS aggregator. I have tried one out once, but didn’t like it much, because I thought I was missing out on some things. So I read my news, tech and otherwise, the old-fashioned way. I visit sites individually.
I know this sounds time-consuming, but I’ve done a few things to speed up the process. One is that I use Firefox and have the adblock plus add-on running, which turns off all advertising and leaves me with just the facts, ma’am. This leads to fewer distractions once I’m on a site. I also have pared down to where I really want to go, and go only there. Once in a site with multiple levels of information (like the New York Times or USAToday, I go only to those sections that I am going to get the information I’m looking for. The last thing I’ve done is turn into a really good headline reader. If the headline doesn’t catch my eye, I pass it up. If the headline does catch my eye, but the first two sentences of the article don’t follow through, then I pass it on for the next article. I also have figured out what tech sites are going to give me the best information without a bunch of duplication. I don’t read Arstechnica anymore, or techmeme, because it is a rehash of what I get at Techdirt. I rarely read Techcrunch, because it is constantly talking about mergers and acquisitions of software and social sites and I’m not interested in either. I get good info from USAToday’s tech section, believe it or not, and I am addicted to Engadget and Gizmodo. I avoid Digg like the plague, because too much of their content is focused on gaming and juvenile fanboy stuff that isn’t my thing.
By being selective and using the tools at my disposal, I get through 5 newspapers and about ten tech news blogs/sites in about 45 minutes this way. It is not a huge amount of time and I consider it to be fairly productive. I spend a whole lot more time writing in my blogs and for here than I do reading the actual news.
I don’t necessarily think that aggregators are the way to go for everyone. I have friends who use them, and I know Todd lives with his, but I have always felt that that “pared down” information was leaving something out for me. I have to wonder if aggregators will eventually go by the wayside through lack of usage. Of the 17 techs in my department at my J.O.B., only one of them uses an aggregator, and we all are heavy readers of tech news. That says something, I think.
My outlook about these news/RSS aggregators is indeed very different from yours. For me, using these stuffs doesn’t suck me. They are indeed excellent tools in sharing information from your website.
I am so contented about it and I don’t intend to omit it…unless there’s a better one coming up.
Checking on 15 sites takes you 45 minutes? I’d never waste that much time. I suspect most of your techs don’t use readers because they are trying to kill time, not gather useful information.
Not only does a reader help keep me current on less frequently updated (but very valuable) websites, it allows me to quickly sift through updates on sometimes noisy sites.
I almost always click through to read the article on the original site, which helps me with article context. If you have built good article scanning skills, then they would be put to very good use in a feed reader. The keyboard shortcuts in Google Reader make this process both fast and painless.
Feed Readers might not be for everyone, but I’d set the bar much lower then you. If you regularly visit more then 3 websites (and are looking for information and not killing time) then you would benefit from a feed reader.