200 is My Magic Subscription Number

By Mike Maddaloni on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at 08:19 AM with 7 comments

As other bloggers have commented over the past few days on how they read blogs, I have decided to chime in, as well as make a public declaration not only of how I read them, but how many I will read.

Google Reader is my feed reader of choice. I say "feed" as I subscribe to feeds that are not necessarily blogs, such as the news headlines from Web sites. It has worked well for me, both on my PC and my Treo 680. I browse through all of the new feeds in a big list, and do not use any of the other features, including folders. This is acceptable to me as I have a variety of feeds, both business and personal, and going through the list and reading the mix is a good break in the day for me.

Last week I decided to keep the number of feeds I subscribe to fewer than 200. I have found that I don’t put too much thought into a blog or Web site when I subscribe to the feed. If I happen upon the site for whatever reason and find some useful information, I will just subscribe. It is not until I subscribe that I see what the feed gives me. If the content is no longer relevant to me, duplicate of something else I am reading or if there are too many posts, I will unsubscribe.

Two hundred has actually been the cap I have been using all along, noticing it when I manage my feeds. Do you have a magic number for your feeds?

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