Photography-Bloglines and Knitting-Bloglines?
Bloglines News pointed to a piece from Hitwise which mentioned:
Bloglines users are also more inclined toward Photography websites, while Google Reader users are more inclined to visit Television websites. Hitwise.
I'm not surprised as it's not the first time Bloglines has been associated with a niche. Back in 2005 there was interest in public folder names on Bloglines and the research uncovered that Bloglines supported a sizable Knitting community.
Hitwise was looking at a traffic comparison between Google Reader and Bloglines and not niche topics. It does seem to me though that Bloglines does a better job at making it easier to follow a specific topic like photography or knitting. Bloglines ability to easily see who has subscribed to a blog and then to browse each users subscriptions makes it easy to find additional topic focused blogs. I've pulled together a rather large assortment of photo, photography related rss feeds in Bloglines and many I found inside Bloglines. Take a look:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/StevenEmmett
I keep all my photo, photography related feeds in alphabetized folders along with all the other topical feeds I'm interested in. Bloglines has always made it easy to maintain a high degree of organization and I think that lends itself to following select topics. I don't use Google Reader so I'm not sure about it's organizational strengths.
I do know that when bloggers I follow switch from using Bloglines to Google Reader they are very likely to "trim the attention sails" or start babbling on about information overload within weeks of making the switch. It's almost fitting that Hitwise also mentioned that Google Reader users were more inclined to visit Television websites. I'll leave it at that.
Bloglines users are also more inclined toward Photography websites, while Google Reader users are more inclined to visit Television websites. Hitwise.
I'm not surprised as it's not the first time Bloglines has been associated with a niche. Back in 2005 there was interest in public folder names on Bloglines and the research uncovered that Bloglines supported a sizable Knitting community.
Hitwise was looking at a traffic comparison between Google Reader and Bloglines and not niche topics. It does seem to me though that Bloglines does a better job at making it easier to follow a specific topic like photography or knitting. Bloglines ability to easily see who has subscribed to a blog and then to browse each users subscriptions makes it easy to find additional topic focused blogs. I've pulled together a rather large assortment of photo, photography related rss feeds in Bloglines and many I found inside Bloglines. Take a look:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/StevenEmmett
I keep all my photo, photography related feeds in alphabetized folders along with all the other topical feeds I'm interested in. Bloglines has always made it easy to maintain a high degree of organization and I think that lends itself to following select topics. I don't use Google Reader so I'm not sure about it's organizational strengths.
I do know that when bloggers I follow switch from using Bloglines to Google Reader they are very likely to "trim the attention sails" or start babbling on about information overload within weeks of making the switch. It's almost fitting that Hitwise also mentioned that Google Reader users were more inclined to visit Television websites. I'll leave it at that.
4 comments:
I just made the switch from Bloglines to Google Reader about a week ago. I switched because GR makes it easier to subscribe to almost any kind of website and to organize those feeds into folders. (Not that it was that difficult to do with Bloglines.)
I did "trim the attention sails" a little. By that, I mean that I got rid of a lot of feeds from sites that I didn't read anymore or sites that never seemed to get updated much. I haven't noticed too much information overload. There is a lot of information in the feeds I subscribe to, but I do what I always did, skip over what doesn't interest me to find stuff that does.
I'm not too sure about information overload as a valid concern when it comes to RSS readers. I see it more as a symptom of a users ability to manage their own time and it's odd seeing tech and PR bloggers write about it as an issue of software. I'm sticking with Bloglines as it works for me and I'm skeptical of Google Reader's ability to work for me.
After using Google Reader a little longer, I've come back to tell you what I really like about it. If I'm blogging and I remember seeing an article that would add to what I'm trying to say, with Bloglines, unless I marked it as unread or put it in my favorites when I first saw it, it's gone once I've scrolled past it and clicked on another site's feed. With GR, it's always there even after you've scrolled past it. Scrolling past it marks it as read, but you can always scroll down past the newer items at the top of each page's feed to find what you're looking for. As you scroll down, GR goes farther and farther back in the site's feed history. Everything is still right there for you even though it has been marked as read. If I'm looking for an article that I saw two weeks ago, I can find it if I scroll down the site's feed page far enough. Then, when I find it again, I can put it in my "starred items" folder. It seems like that might make for a cluttered reader and threw me off when I first started using GR ("Hey, I just read this. Why is it still here?), but I've learned to love it as I've used it a few times to find that story I remembered reading a few days before. The trick, of course, is remembering what site posted the article in the first place.
Thanks! Cool insight as I have a terrible time blogging out what I discover in my feeds in Bloglines. I don't save anything while reading in Bloglines, I bookmark locally. I end up with three folders of bookmarked items that I then browse. That gets cumbersome.
One of the main reasons I've started to use ScribeFire for this blog is so I can utilize my bookmarks better.
Still not sold on Google Reader but I trust your insight.
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