Welcome to Thoughts for Thursday! This feature is our outlet to talk with you about whatever we currently have on our minds. It might be bookish, it might not! Now for this week's thought:
My Journey Through Feed Readers
When I started blogging, Google Friend Connect paired with Google Reader was the way to follow blogs. And when I started following blogs, there wasn't much rhyme or reason to who I followed. We participated in the meme Feature & Follow quite a few times and that encouraged a lot of "following back". In quick time, my feed reader became a mess of blogs that I didn't share any interests with nor have any personal connection with. The blogs I did care about were being overshadowed by the ones I didn't.
When Google announced that it was getting rid of Google Reader and Bloglovin emerged on the scene, I stupidly just imported my feeds from Google Reader instead of taking that opportunity to start fresh. So Bloglovin ended up being no more helpful to me than Google Reader was. One day I noticed that I stopped using it entirely and was just deleting those emails automatically because they were filled with posts I had no desire to read. Instead, I was keeping a mental list of blogs that I liked and made sure I visited them on a regular basis. But there were only so many blogs I could keep up with...
Around that time, Ashley mentioned that she used Feedly to follow blogs and I thought to myself BLANK SLATE and quickly transferred my mental list to a new account. But now that I wasn't limited to what my memory could hold, I started adding more and more of my favorite blogs. But then I panicked because I didn't want my Feedly account to become so huge that I became overwhelmed with Feedly too.
You see, there are blogs I read/comment on almost every post and then there are blogs that I read/comment on when I have time. I wanted each of those two groups to have their own home. That's when I decided it was time to clean out my Bloglovin account...
OMG that thing was a DISASTER. So many blogs I followed hadn't posted in YEARS, others I haven't read/thought of in years. And then there is the fact that my interests evolved. It took me a while to clean it up and then once all the clutter was gone I realized that there were so many blogs I liked that I never followed! WHAT? In reality you were in my mental list or I was following you via Feedly BUT STILL. This is why you might have noticed me JUST following you even though we've been friends for a while. Sorry about that. But now I'm likely following you twice so...
It's still a work in progress as I try to figure out what works best for me but I feel MUCH BETTER now that I am significantly more organized. Now I can be a better commenter too.
So how do you follow blogs/manage your feed readers? Do you have any tips and tricks to using Bloglovin or Feedly?
When Google announced that it was getting rid of Google Reader and Bloglovin emerged on the scene, I stupidly just imported my feeds from Google Reader instead of taking that opportunity to start fresh. So Bloglovin ended up being no more helpful to me than Google Reader was. One day I noticed that I stopped using it entirely and was just deleting those emails automatically because they were filled with posts I had no desire to read. Instead, I was keeping a mental list of blogs that I liked and made sure I visited them on a regular basis. But there were only so many blogs I could keep up with...
Around that time, Ashley mentioned that she used Feedly to follow blogs and I thought to myself BLANK SLATE and quickly transferred my mental list to a new account. But now that I wasn't limited to what my memory could hold, I started adding more and more of my favorite blogs. But then I panicked because I didn't want my Feedly account to become so huge that I became overwhelmed with Feedly too.
You see, there are blogs I read/comment on almost every post and then there are blogs that I read/comment on when I have time. I wanted each of those two groups to have their own home. That's when I decided it was time to clean out my Bloglovin account...
OMG that thing was a DISASTER. So many blogs I followed hadn't posted in YEARS, others I haven't read/thought of in years. And then there is the fact that my interests evolved. It took me a while to clean it up and then once all the clutter was gone I realized that there were so many blogs I liked that I never followed! WHAT? In reality you were in my mental list or I was following you via Feedly BUT STILL. This is why you might have noticed me JUST following you even though we've been friends for a while. Sorry about that. But now I'm likely following you twice so...
It's still a work in progress as I try to figure out what works best for me but I feel MUCH BETTER now that I am significantly more organized. Now I can be a better commenter too.
So how do you follow blogs/manage your feed readers? Do you have any tips and tricks to using Bloglovin or Feedly?
