I could not agree with you more. Reddit doesn't "do it" anymore. Digg has LONG been gone from my radar. Greader is _always_ overflowing with data. Signal to noise ratio is way too low. WAY TOO LOW. Seems to be a wide open field for a good (TM) solution ;)

Very thought provoking. The biggest challenge thinkers face today is slowing the flow of information needed to firehose volumes and then picking the wheat from the chaff.

It strikes me that the entire Wisdom of Crowds phenomenon seems to require a pretty specific set of circumstances to work. A huge crowd supposedly does a decent job of being wise for the most of us. But to be wise for the one of us, we need a crowd that reflects our interests, our challenges and way of absorbing info. And a few nutjobs and whackadoodles thrown in for paradigm shaking.

Good stuff.

Between work and home, I have 5 feeds subscribed to and I check them maybe once a month when I'm looking for something to read.

I don't use Digg, del.ici.ous, reddit, or any of that other garbage. Life's too busy to be worried about the minutia.

I don't miss out on any news. In fact, I quite frequently hear the local news reporting stories I read days earlier on the 'net. Why spend time on such sites when you can be reading, exercising, spending time with the family, enjoying the outdoors, playing with your pets, hanging out with friends, etc., etc.?

Being a feed-complusionist is detrimental to a healthy balance of life. Just like too much salt, fat, sugar, or anything... you can have too much when it comes to all the inane things on the Internet.

People could do themselves a favor by dropping down to less than 10 blogs (9, since Daily Fix already counts as one) that get regular rotation. If it's not in your memory--"Oh, I wonder what's on the Daily Fix today?"--it's not important enough to subscribe to.

Besides, if the content you're receiving is so generic and not directed at you, Seni Thomas, it's not worth your time to click "Read" anyway.

@Michael

Deciding on the number of feeds to read is a personal choice, however, I am going beyond the mere consumption of news announcements. Blogs provide opinions and analysis on the events taking place , which I'm sorry to say a local news station could never do, at least not in a manner that would provide a tenth of the depth.

This is not about digesting news. Blogs feeds are about joining a larger collaborative conversation and being inspired. It's about expanding my understanding on topics I am passionate about; akin to reading to a book that unfolds in real-time.

In addition, the memes that you catch in the long tail media space take months to bubble up to main stream media, if at all. Thus, I guarantee you are missing some great articles out there.

Finally, this article isn't about merely consumption news more efficiently, its about leveraging your Crowds to provide more relevant depth to content. Saving time is just a nice bonus.

That said, time is scarce, and I don't have kids. Everyone has their priorities.

Seni,
Thanks for responding. I wasn't suggesting the way you do things is wrong. I was merely saying that there's too much information out there; that I would be in an ever-deepening vat of quicksand if I tried to stay on top of 100 RSS feeds daily.

I could be wrong, but I always envisioned people who have 100 RSS feeds, watch DVDs on their iPods, and scrobble 200 tracks a day as those who take mass transit to work. I'd like to have that kind of free time, but don't sadly.

I agree with elzurk and think I just gave an overly verbose post that supported his comment.

@Michael

This exchange we are having is a perfect example of contextually relevant conversation around a piece of content (The article). It is helping to flesh out different view points, and nuances of the messages. I appreciate your comments, this is exactly what I mean by a collaborative conversation.

Keep 'em coming

As a few heavy duty feed reader users, we found the same issue.

In response to that, we created http://www.feedables.com, an aggregation website covering a specific topic of information utilizing rss.

The website http://marketing.feedables.com currently highlights the MarketingProfs feeds.

Ironically, we used the food / feed metaphor throughout and we felt Michael Lombardi said it best when he described it this way, "Being a feed-complusionist is detrimental to a healthy balance of life. Just like too much salt, fat, sugar, or anything... you can have too much when it comes to all the inane things on the Internet."

Thanks for the discussion on what we also saw as a needed life hack.

I thought I was the only one that looks for obscure theories on blogs. I know I've put some out there on my blog. I'm a manufacturing engineer and as I daydream at work, I think about applying the concepts in manufacturing to daily living. I've thrown together some posts, but I'm not sure if many other people 'get it'. Have a look at my blog and tell me what you think. The esoteric posts are in the 'observations' category. I focus a lot on paradoxes

By the way, I have some theories on marketing based on my background as a chemical engineer, in case anyone wants to hear them. Let me know if intersted and I'll put together a post.

Thanks, Feedables. As hard-core feed readers, I appreciate that you understand my comment.

Seni - You cover perfectly the entire dilemma. On the other side of that dilemma rests another: (presuming the production of high quality content and avoiding the cheesy false traffic garnering methods) how do you scour the web for to find the segment of people who genuinely want to consume what you produce? Every time I go down an inadvertent and unlikely path I get the response "wow, I didn't know you could 'subscribe' to a site like yours" The problem is, many of us content producers live on the savvy side of technology while the folks we produce for aren't aggregating, feed reading, etc. The trick is finding them so we can become part of the wisdom of their crowd.

thanks a lot..