October 22, 2009

Stars and Favorites

My first six months using blogger found me bookmarking quite a few blogs. I sorted them under my favorites tab on my piece o' crap HP and checked in on each blog every day. Then I heard about Google Reader, and it seriously changed my life. No longer did I have to go to each blog - instead, their RSS feeds came straight to me! Genius, I tell you.

With my use of Google Reader, the amount of blogs I was reading exploded. Before I knew it, I was so overwhelmed with RSS feeds that I had to sort them into folders. I was still able to read them all, though. And as I read, I was starring all the posts I liked. I'm a person that likes a lot of things, so if you click on my starred items folder, then you probably won't be surprised to see at least a thousand posts that I like or that contain some element (like a link) that I want to reference again.

But seriously, if you asked me to list some of the things I've starred (without referencing the starred items themselves), at this moment I can only tell you two. One is the very first blog post I ever starred. The second is a recipe for granola. (I actually made that granola last week, and let me tell you - it was tasty!) I am insane with the hoarding of cool blog posts. It's a sickness, I tell you.

Anyway, being the completely obsessive headcase that I am, I quickly found myself with too many RSS feeds in my reader. (A lot of this is due to discovering flickr - did you know that you can subscribe to photostreams? And that there are so many talented photographers on flickr that it makes my head spin? Which is basically a recipe for disaster.) Every once in awhile, I'd do a great big purge and unsubscribe from thirty or so blogs. But still, for at least the last year, I've had 1000+ unread items in my Google Reader. Obviously I just cannot keep up with everything that I want to. And that sucks. Because there's so much good stuff out there.

(And that is what I love about this blogging thing. People are writing. And reading. And taking photos. And being crafty. And making friends and contacts. It's great. I truly love it.)

But like I said, I can't keep up with everyone. So I do have a hierarchy I follow when reading blogs. I start off by reading and commenting on my friends' blogs. And that's usually as far as I get. Everything else seems to fall by the wayside, including some blogs that I adore. So this morning I made a "Favorites" folder. I moved all of my favorite blogs (excluding the blogs I regularly comment on) into that folder, so once I'm done reading my friends' blogs, I can read some other blogs that I happen to love, even though I haven't really connected with the bloggers writing them.

But I still haven't unsubscribed from all the other blogs. And I've never dared to "mark all as read." Because I'm afraid I might miss something. I wish that I had the time and energy to keep up with all 400+ of my RSS feeds. Yes, 400+. I told you I was obsessive! Can you imagine if I was commenting on each post? I'd love to, but I'm a big time lurker.

So, tell me, how many blogs do you read? Do you comment on all of them?

9 comments:

phairhead said...

12, I think. possibly 20. I comment on all of them :D

Amy said...

I've cut back a lot on the blogs I read (apparently not as much as I have on my blog writing lol) I'm down to 39 right now. And I only comment on a couple of them. I too am a big time lurker. :)

kim said...

I think GR has about 50 subscriptions. I am commenting more now that I am not at work where blogs are blocked. :)

Anonymous said...

I subsribe to about 50, yours being one of the newer (I can't believe I didn't know about it sooner!). I do my best to comment but it is definitely not consistent. I only comment on blogs whose authors I know fairly well and I use mark all as read anytime there is a blog with over 30 posts I haven't caught up on. I wish I could read it all, too!

Unknown said...

well it appears I have 248 blogs in my Google Reader that I follow. I don't often comment though because I view them within Reader and then would have to click over to the actual blog post to comment. I do find though that, when I do click over, I'm always more engaged because of the visual appeal of the blog itself vs. reader.

Kimberly said...

Well. as you know I am a new convert to google reader. I am still slowly moving bookmarked blogs to the reader.
It is taking what seems like forever. I have sorted about 200 blogs down to 89. However still have about 400 to go through! I am also trying to sort into categories (favs, crafts, food, etc) as I go.
I definitely don't comment as often as I would like. Once I get my reader set, hopefully I can concentrate on being less of a lurker!

Angie Eats Peace said...

I have about 100 in GR.
I commented on maybe 20 of them?
I definitely comment of friends' blogs, then maybe on some Vegan blogs that I get recipes/ideas off of.

amber said...

I probably have upwards of 100 that I follow, but I only regularly comment on about half of them. Another quarter or so, I comment every so often, and then the rest I'm a pure lurker. I definitely comment on my friend's blogs though. :)

Anonymous said...

I only follow about 10-15 blogs and I'm a lurker in most of them. I have never used Google reader, and probably never will, I'm just old fashioned that way. I like going to the actual blogs to check out the design of the blog - the colors, fonts, layouts, etc.

I started reading blogs to pass the time during boring days at work. To have all new blog posts automatically come to me via one google reader page (instead of having to visit 10 different websites a day) is definitely not an effective way to waste time :)