Not All Blogs Are The Same (or… Some Blogs are More Equal Than Other Blogs)

I’m realizing that I really don’t look at all my RSS feeds as the same kind of homogeneous, overwhelming thing. Ok, let me back up and start from the beginning. {insert wavy flashback graphics and sound effect here}

I had spent the past weekend plus (72 hours or so) actually living life. You know… writing code for Bscopes. Chauffeuring the kids around to Tae Kwon Do, etc. Finally watching the hour of Battlestar Galactica recorded on my HD TiVo before the series goes off the air. Not that it wasn’t a good weekend… it was. But, not once did I have time to sit down in front of Google Reader.

When I did have time to try and catch up, there was, as you’d expect, a massive RSS Overload. And I did, as you’d expect, use Bscopes to help manage it. Like Steve posted about last week, I found conversations in the Blogosphere. That was good. Definitely helpful. But, I still wasn’t in Blog reading heaven.

What Went Wrong

Part of my problem was using Bscopes equally on all the Blogs in my feed reader. However, they really weren’t all the same. I think I am dealing with several different categories of blogs in my feed aggregator:

• Must Read Blogs — The ones that have two attributes in common:
  1. The author almost  always writes something brilliant, or funny, or insightful.
  2. The author doesn’t post more than a few times a day or even just a few times a week.

  (Here let me share a little link love with bloggers who, I’m sure, don’t need it like Seth Godin or Mark Evanier).
  These are blogs I know I’ll fully consume no matter how far behind I get.

• No Need To Read Blogs — The ones that I never intend to read 100%. I do read some articles on these blogs, but notmost of the articles. Two examples of these are:
  1. News articles. I get mine from Google News. But CNN, the Washington Post or any other set of headlines show the same pattern. They publish a ton of RSS posts each day (ton ≈ hundreds) and the posts almost never link out to anything. Do other blogers link in to them? Sometimes.
  2. Deal of the day sites. I have one for Amazon deals and also DealMac. I hardly ever buy, but do check to see if some amazing bargain shows up. Again, links aren’t really a big deal here. Usually the only one is to the deal itself.

  For these type of feeds, I can scan them by with putting Google Reader into list mode (where all I see is the post’s title in a compact list). That’s all the info I need to decide if I read it or skip it. My biggest problem is an emotional one… I just need to get past that nagging feeling that I’m missing something when I skip over things. It’s the completest in me that needs to collect 100% of something. To be black and white rather than gray.

•  Love/Hate Relationship Blogs — This is the more complicated category. Somethings I love and hate about some blogs I try and read:
  • Brilliant writing: I’ve found blogs that say something profound, insightful, or useful. But not always. Maybe not even most times. The most frustrating ones are the ones that are brilliant just often enough to keep me from dropping them, but which have many articles I don’t like at all.
  • Group blogs: I’ve found blogs where some of the articles are great. And where others stink. And then I notice that it’s because there are 3 or 4 or even 10 people writing on the blog. It gets even more frustrating when no one person is consistently interesting, but the blog is interesting overall. The MakeUseOf blog is like this. Sometimes this blog has the most amazing and useful stuff; but it depends on who is writing the post and what they are writing about.
  • Specialized news from a fire hose: I’ve always loved movies and TV. And as a certified geek (I can still name way too many trivial details about ST:TOS and ST:TNG) I find sites like AICN to be wonderful sources of info on what is out now and coming soon. But even though the site’s topic is focused, it still covers too many things I that I don’t care about (I never did like Buffy or Firefly, so sue me). And it still publishes way too frequently to consume. TechCrunch is another example of this. Sometimes it is wonderful entrepreneurial and tech info. Other times it’s just Mike Arrington ranting. But no matter what it publishes a ton of posts every day. I want to read it all but sometimes can’t keep up.

  These are the type of feeds where my Google Reader fails me. The volume of posts per day combined with the number of blogs that I have a love/hate relationship with is just too big. If I miss a day or two then I can’t catch up and read them all.

What To Do

I’m coming to the conclusion that the most fertile progress with Bscopes will be found by concentrating on this third kind of blog and not the other two. I think I need a few more tools out of Bscopes:

• Sort feeds into some big piles — Some way of taking the full set of feeds and grouping them so I can focus on just the ones that need Bscopes’ help the most.
• A way to focus on a subset —To designate a smaller subset of all the feeds. I’ve got tags. Tags are good. But I’m talking about subsetting based on how I want to treat the feeds and how I want to search, sift, graph, and visualize them. Not based on their subject matter.
• A way to zoom back out and look at the big picture  — To see the way that the winds are blowing (to use Christophe’s metaphor). To find the interesting conversations. To see the popular posts that are linked the most.
• A way to zoom in and understand the details —to be able to see the individual posts, headlines (and maybe even some text) for the elements of a conversation in the blogosphere. So that I can decide if it truly is interesting and should be read or should be skipped.

I guess I need to go now and start working on those tools and some others. Now that I’m starting to figure out what it is I want out of Bscopes. (Who knew eating your own dog food could be tasty?)

Of course, there is the possibility that I’m completely wrong. And, there is the strong probability that if I am, Steve will tell me quite quickly. But all you Bscopes users are also reading a ton of blogs. So… you tell me… what else do we need to help you cut through the clutter? The “post a comment” button is just a few pixels away.

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