Reducing the subscription count

Kimbro Staken describes reducing the number of subscriptions he reads (or perhaps, doesn’t read) on the Bloglines service. It’s the big commercial sites that go, leaving more personal and independent stuff behind.

This mirrors my own experience. I think that there are a couple of reasons:

• Many of the big news sites produce many new articles in a day. If you get a day behind with, say, The Register it’s very hard to catch up again. In the end I decide that it’s not worth the bother, mark all of the articles as read and move on. After doing this two or three times it seems clear that the feed isn’t providing any value, so it might as well go.
• “Big News” sources are everywhere - on the TV, on radio, in print. There’s no shortage of big news. The details that individuals bring are therefore more interesting and precious.

Oh, Slashdot is firmly in the “big commercial” camp these days.