Remember when you just read one thing at a time? Those were the days huh? One newspaper at a time, one book at a time, one blog at a time. Then came along a way to aggregate all the stuff you want to keep tabs on and you were no longer reading one thing at a time. You were multi-reading, which is like multi-tasking, only limited to reading.
About half of the people who subscribe to this blog do so by RSS Feed, while the other half subscribe by email. RSS Feed subscribers will see a posting that gets published in their RSS feed reader within minutes of my hitting the Publish button. Email subscribers will likely not see the posting until it arrives in their mailbox the next day, unless I happen to publish early in the morning, in which case they may get same day delivery.
Preferences rely, of course, on your needs in consuming news. For me, a feed reader is my preference because I consume news from a ton of sources involved in various aspects of healthcare, particularly relating to the medical products industry. A reader allows me to digest what is going on all day long from about 500 different sources and seize on those items which interest me. Some of that news, I push out, in Online Pokies turn – either here on the blog or on my Twitter feed. Aggregation of all the news I follow in this manner is an essential service for me.
For those of us who use Google Reader to aggregate our feeds, we learned in March of this year that Google would be pulling the plug on Google Reader as of July 1 – date nearly upon us – which necessitates a decision to either get a new reader or do without. The news of the shutdown was a sudden blow for many of us and there was a sense of helplessness as I wondered what I would do now…For some of us, this news was on the order of something like – oh guess what – they have decided not to make cars anymore…..
Digg has even got a countdown clock running to show how much time is left. And Digg does so with a reason. They are in the process of constructing their own Reader to launch in time for that to be an option for those of us looking for a new reader.
I migrated my feeds effortlessly to my new reader. If you have been procrastinating, perhaps it is time to get started on your search that will enable you to keep aggregating your news the way you want. Happy Reading.
