So I unsubscribed from a lot of blogs and moved most of my reading over to Twitter. Since Google+ debuted, I’ve been progressively abandoning Twitter for posts on Plus. But I still kept a few RSS feeds that were so valuable to me that I always wanted to read them. I  usually had less than 100 new posts to read a day, so I was generally happy.

But now Google Reader has been redesigned, and I’m very unhappy indeed. When I first heard about this news, I thought it meant better integration with Google+, which could only be a good thing. But this doesn’t seem to be so. The sharing feature that sends Reader items to Google+ is unwieldy to use and the end result is none too elegant. But even worse, Google Reader is now impossible to read. There is so much white space and no clear delineation between posts, making it a chore to read anything. Considering that’s Reader’s main purpose, I’d say the redesign is a massive fail.

So does this mean the much-predicted death of RSS is finally here? Well, it may be here for me. However, RSS is still a fundamentally useful way of keeping up with new content on favorite websites. I just want a friendly way of accessing that content. How do the Kindle and iPad handle feeds?

Here’s an article that captures exactly my feelings on the changes to Google Reader: The Google Reader Redesign is an Ugly, Lonely User Experience – Forbes.

“And it’s like, why can’t I be a good enough person to know things about anything? Why am I so pathetic that I can’t even read, like, 100 words a day? And then I have to hit the ‘pretend everything is read’ button, which is basically like hitting the ‘lie to yourself’ button. It’s embarrassing. I hate myself when I do it. It’s like the biggest possible failure you could have in your entire life, basically.”

When I read this article in The New York Observer about obsessive RSS completists, I definitely recognized myself. Yeah, I used to subscribe to 100+ blogs and websites in Google Reader. Yeah, I used to have to get that bold number of unread posts down to 0 whenever I opened Reader. And I couldn’t just mark all as read, either. I had to skim every post — the title, at least! It felt like cheating, otherwise.

And then I had an epiphany. I was spending so much time on Reader that other things were being neglected. That was okay when I had a job, but now I have more important things to do than work. Like read real books. And take care of my child. Something had to change.

But before change can happen, there must be an ah-ha moment, when you say to yourself, as I did, “This is my tool. It does not own me. It works for me. I am the boss around here.”

The first thing I did was clean out all of my subscriptions. I unsubscribed to everything. I only kept a handful of feeds that I cherished and absolutely knew I wanted to read (almost) every post. These went into a folder labeled “Blogs I Like” and there they will remain permanently.

Next, I went on Twitter and subscribed to the Twitter feeds for the blogs I had unsubscribed from. Twitter has much different — and significantly lower — expectations than RSS. (I have written about this before.) There is no bold number of unread items. Eventually, what you haven’t read falls off the screen into oblivion. Twitter is not your ever-growing pile of homework; it is the water cooler, the fun place you drop in during work breaks.

(Eventually, I had to weed down the number of Twitter feeds I was following too, but more on that at another time.)

Gradually, I started adding blogs back to my Google Reader. It is, after all, not easy to really get to know someone on Twitter. If I want to dive in-depth into a subject or learn more about a particular writer, than I need to read their blog for a while. Only for a while. All of these new blogs go into a folder labeled “Trial.”

Here are my rules:

• When I subscribe to a new trial blog, I mark everything as read right off the bat. After all, I don’t want to start off with a backlog and handicap myself.
• If I log in to Google Reader and there are more than 100 unread items, I immediately mark everything in the Trial folder as “read.” No guilt, no mercy. I am just reading these sites on a trial basis, so I’m not missing anything. This is what I tell myself, and it works.
• If at the end of the month or so, I haven’t shared or starred a post from a particular feed, then I unsubscribe. (I use Google Reader’s Trends to find this info.) So at the beginning of every month, it’s like I’m starting with a fresh slate. What a good feeling.

If I really like a “trial” blog, I may start following the Twitter feed. But if it moves from the Trial folder to the Blogs I Like folder — which currently contains only 3 subscriptions, by the way — then we know it’s love.

And in the meantime, I can get back to the book I’m reading. Right after I check Twitter.

Feed Me, I’m Hungry! New Yorkers Skim, Freak, Purge as RSS Reading Mounts (New York Observer)

After using Buzz for a little while, I have decided that I mostly like it. Here’s why.

Most people are comparing Buzz to Facebook and Twitter. Buzz does a lot of the good things Facebook does, only much, much better. The interface is cleaner and easier to use. So far, I have not had to worry about catching spam, malware or viruses from Buzz, and it avoids all the inanities of Facebook. The commenting and like features are super-easy to use; the privacy features take a little more figuring out (especially if you don’t use Gmail’s Groups feature), but not much, and they are also easier and more versatile than Facebook’s, as far as I can tell. The integration with Google Reader is especially powerful, and I would like to see that strengthened over time, particularly so that I don’t have to read everyone’s shared items twice.

I like that Buzz lets me communicate very easily with people I email a lot, particularly friends and family. It’s great for quick, asynchronous chat sessions that I would normally carry on over email. I like to see what my friends are reading on the web and quickly comment on them. I would close my Facebook account today and only use Buzz if there weren’t so many people on Facebook who I want to stay in touch with and who seem unlikely to move. Regardless, I think I will be visiting Facebook even less in the future.

Buzz is not a competitor with Twitter, though. It does not even try to do the things that Twitter does well. I use Twitter to find news, links and trends. It’s basically my window on the social web. I like it because I can drop in when I have time and ignore it when I don’t. I would never try to follow high-volume posters like Mashable or the New York Times on Buzz. That would quickly get overwhelming.

Also, my audience on Twitter is very different. It is larger and made up mostly of people who don’t know me, who I assume are more interested in specific topics I frequently write about and post links on. So I will continue to use Buzz and Twitter as complementary networks, rather than try to replace one with the other.

I suspect that Google knows this and that is why they let you feed your Twitter content into Buzz. I disconnected my Twitter feed from Buzz, though. There is too much possibility for redundancy, and besides, I tweet a lot. I don’t want to overwhelm the people following me on Buzz with too much noise. I also didn’t connect my FriendFeed to Buzz for the same reasons.

Some people are concerned about the privacy of Buzz. These people didn’t take a few minutes just to learn the software before getting all upset about it, I suspect. You can turn Buzz off — look for the link at the bottom of the page. You can block people from following you. You can make your posts private. Buzz launches with suggestions for people to follow culled from your email and chat contacts and people you’re sharing with on Reader, but you don’t have to follow any of them.

The biggest concern may be that Buzz posts the list of people you’re following and people following you on your Google Profile page. This is no different from what Twitter does, but it’s a bit more personal, since these people are also your email contacts. It is very easy to turn this public display off, which I did straightaway. Just go to your Google Profile page (click your name in Buzz), click Edit Settings and then uncheck the box beside “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me.”

So you can choose to follow me on Buzz (via my Google Profile) or on Twitter or both. I post more to Twitter and it’s more impersonal but possibly more interesting. But on Buzz we can have conversations about the links I share. Both have value. Where you likely won’t see much of me anymore is Facebook. I don’t think I’ll miss it.

More opinions and help with Buzz:

• Google Buzz re-invents Gmail (O’Reilly Radar)
• Google Buzz is not about killing Twitter, a new era in email arises (Ahad Bokhari)
• Google launches Google Buzz to rein in social media overload (Ars Technica)
• Google Buzz in Gmail (Official Gmail Blog)
• Readers, get your Buzz on (Official Google Reader Blog)
• Hide/remove Google Buzz updates from your Gmail inbox (Lifehacker)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Can Google Buzz Succeed Where FriendFeed Couldn’t? (readwriteweb.com)
• Google Buzz Is Google’s Approach to Sharing and the Social Space [Social Networking] (lifehacker.com)
• Google Buzz: The Missing Features (readwriteweb.com)

Now when millions of people use your software and you’ve still gotta fiddle, well, you’re going to upset some (or many) of your users. I’ve noticed that three websites I use frequently have been mightily fiddled with recently.

First up is Google Reader. First, they introduced a “like” button (a la Facebook) on articles and some additional sharing features, including making it easier to follow people’s shared items. Now they’ve added a Popular Items section, moved the Recommendations for new blogs to the left sidebar (called Recommended Sources) and added a new sort for articles: Sort by Magic.

I actually like most of the changes here. The Google Reader interface still works pretty much as it always has, with just a few new geegaws, so it hasn’t slowed down my browsing any. I magically found some cool people to follow, and the Popular Items section is a great way to kill a dull Sunday afternoon looking at cute pics, fails and funny cartoons without actually having to subscribe to any of those bourgeois feeds. I turned on “sort by magic,” and to tell the truth, I don’t notice any difference in the sort order, but I love the name. My grade: A.

Facebook’s changes aren’t nearly so intuitive. They’ve instituted two feeds, a Live Feed, which shows all your friends’ status updates, and a News Feed, which is supposedly the most interesting items from the past day. I find them both equally murky, and now I’m always vaguely suspicious that I’m missing something.

I was pretty much over Facebook, anyway. My friend calls it a “very clever Rolodex,” and that’s how I’ve started to treat it, only visiting when I get a message or need to look someone up. For day-to-day status updates, I get much more value out of Twitter. My grade on the Facebook changes: C-.

Quick tip: You can restore Facebook to (more or less) its old look. On your Home page, in the top left corner, drag Status Updates to the top of the nav bar and then click on it (you may have to click on the tiny “More” to show the Status Updates option).

Finally, I’ve been using StumbleUpon for a very long time as an archive of links I’ve liked, and I think I have 1,400+ links stored there. I also use Delicious for active research and projects, but StumbleUpon is more of an archive of old links for me. And the redesign has me baffled. I can never tell what interface is going to appear when I click “Stumble It.” I don’t know whether I’ll get the option to assign categories or write a review or if the stumble will even work. It’s all way too confusing and basically makes me want to abandon the site altogether. My grade: F.

If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that everything will change, whether we like it or not. And if there’s a software developer involved, the changes will be frequent, random and usually come without warning. We might as well get used to it.

My husband recently opted to get the Android phone over the iPhone. He loves it, especially how it integrates with all his other Google stuff. Now he can email me, chat with me on Google Talk, snoop on my Google calendar, all from his phone. He hasn’t looked at me since he got it. He sends me tweets from the same couch I’m sitting on. I think he wants to marry his phone.

The point is, Google keeps doing neat-o stuff and releasing it for little dollars, and that means that Google is slowly taking over the world. We’ll wake up one morning and find that Google has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to itself. And we won’t care, as long as Gmail is up.

I personally use iGoogle as my home page, Gmail for email, Google Talk for chat, Google Calendar to manage my schedule, Google Reader for reading websites, Chrome for web browsing and Google Docs for all my documents. I have set up my Google Profile so people can find my online stuff easier. Google even helps me track the swine flu. Once the Chrome OS comes out, I will strongly consider ditching Windows. Google Wave does not seem like it will be the game changer everyone thought it would be, but it’s probably a nifty little program that I would definitely use if I actually collaborated with anyone. All in all, Google owns my ass.

And I don’t care. Should I? I’m not sure. Google messes up occasionally, as they did with the iGoogle redesign last year, and as far as I can tell, they do not believe in customer support, at least not for their non-paying customers. But all of their software does a good job, it’s free, it’s easy and it plays well together. By the time we figure out the downside, it will probably be much too late…

P.S. LifeHacker offers up seven easy ways to integrate your Googled world and free tools to back up your Googled data.

My social media map

(I used bubbl.us, which is a really intuitive, easy-to-use, free mind-mapping tool.)

This doesn’t show all my social media sites, just the ones I use most regularly. But it did help me organize my social media efforts, at least in my own head. The black lines show everything that feeds into FriendFeed, which is my nexus and the most complete view of what I’m doing online. The gray lines show which services are being automagically updated by which other services, usually via an RSS feed or FriendFeed’s automatic output to Twitter.

I organized my social media universe into four quadrants. My home quadrant (tan) — my blogs but also my Google Profile – are my home bases on the Web and also where the world finds me. My networks quadrant (green) have organized quite naturally into a professional network that I use only occasionally (LinkedIn), a network of friends and family I know in real life (Facebook) and an online network with many overlaps with the other two networks that I use most frequently and is the largest (Twitter).

My links quadrant (purple) are my tools for collecting and sharing links. I read blog posts and other articles via RSS feed in Google Reader every day, and share interesting finds out to my network. Delicious is where I permanently store links and do research. StumbleUpon is more of a historical record of links I’ve blogged about, plus a lot of random fun stuff I discover while surfing the web.

Finally, there are miscellaneous tools that reflect my hobbies in the pink quadrant. I’m an avid reader, so I have several tools for organizing and recording my reading and books (LibraryThing, Lists of Bests, All Consuming), which feed back to my books blog and sometimes Twitter. I also use tools to track my goals (43 Things) and travel (43 Places), and to upload my photos (Flickr).

Of course, not everything is on here. I didn’t include really miscellaneous places like my Amazon Wishlist or Bookmooch, or places I rarely visit like Digg or Technorati. But it is nice being able to visualize my little online universe and my place within it.

Image by Daniel F. Pigatto via Flickr

I have a colleague who’s interested in bringing some of our organization’s knowledge management efforts into the Web 2.0 world, and she wanted to know how to get started. My advice was, before getting an organizational blog or setting up a wiki or something like that, that she — or ideally everyone on her team — get involved on a personal level. Because I don’t think you can get Web 2.0 — and therefore your organization can’t get Web 2.0 — unless you’re doing it. It’s all about participation and collaboration, and that means you have to dive in.

So here are my suggestions for the steps you should take before you even think about setting up an organizational blog or wiki or anything like that.

1. Start bookmarking. You are soon going to be touring all over the web, and you need a way to remember the best blogs, videos and other stuff you find. You can use your browser’s bookmarks feature, but the Web 2.0 way is to share. So I suggest getting an account on a social bookmarking site. I recommend Delicious because it is so clean and easy to use, but StumbleUpon is also a good option. Both provide toolbar buttons so you can bookmark as you surf. Get in the habit of bookmarking the sites that interest you and tagging them in meaningful ways.

2. Read some blogs. Blogs are the heart of the social web. Somewhere out there, someone is writing about something you’re interested in or working on. Use Google’s blog search to find 5-10 blogs on those subjects and start reading them. Take a look at their blogrolls or the blogs they cite often, and start reading them too. Of course, there’s an upper limit to the number of blogs you can read, but you do want to be keeping up with at least 20, probably more if you can handle it.

RSS feed readers make it a lot easier to keep up with all those blogs, because they deliver new content to you, instead of you having to go out on the web to get it. I like Google Reader myself, but there are many  other choices. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have RSS feed readers built in, as well. To find the feed, look for the orange RSS feed icon and click on it:

The most important thing, though, when reading blogs is to comment on what you read and like. Web 2.0 is all about participation, and commenting is one of the main ways to join in. Once you start commenting on blogs in your niche, you’ll meet the bloggers and other commenters and begin getting to know the community that you’re joining.

3. Jump into Twitter. It’s time to up the interaction a notch, and Twitter is a good way to do it. You can start out small and build up as your confidence increases. Find a few people to follow; first check the blogs you’re reading, as bloggers are typically on Twitter too. See who they are following and follow any of those people who seem interesting, as well. There are plenty of Twitter applications that make following tweets easier.

Why are you on Twitter? You will get in the habit of sharing: what you’re working on, what you’re reading, links, whatever. And you will have a ready-made community to ask questions and get feedback from. What’s more, it’s fun.

4. Get a blog. It’s now time to join the conversation. And I don’t mean starting an organizational blog. That should come later. First, you should start your own personal blog where you can write in your own voice. You may choose to write about your work or about some other passion. What matters is that you’re adding your voice to the conversation.

Starting a blog is easy and takes less than five minutes. I recommend WordPress.com as the best free blogging platform, because even if you don’t know the software, it’s easy to learn and get started on right away. If you’re intimidated by having a full-fledged blog or don’t have the time, you can start a “micro-blog” on Tumblr and share interesting links, video, quotes and other short snippets. Remember to keep commenting on other blogs and leave a link to your blog when you do. You’ll soon find that folks who read your comments are stopping by your blog and commenting on what you’re writing.

And before you know it, you’re part of Web 2.0.

If you follow these steps, more or less, and get involved in the online community on a personal level, you’ll probably find it much easier to think of creative and worthwhile ways your organization can get involved.

Image via CrunchBase

Someone on Twitter yesterday asked about how people use Google Reader‘s Trends feature. I had a quick reply then, but I thought I’d blog about it as well.

I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds in Reader. If I see an interesting website, and it has a feed, I tend to subscribe, because only by reading over a few days can I really determine if the content is of value to me. (All websites should offer feeds for people like me, by the way.)

While I’m reading my feeds, I use Google Reader’s features to share articles I find particularly interesting or star them for later reference. I may see something I want to blog about, for instance, so I’ll star it. I also email articles quite frequently if I know they will be of interest to someone in particular. Google Reader’s Trends captures all of this activity.

When the number of feeds becomes overwhelming, and I need to winnow them down — usually about once a month — I’ll check the trends. The feeds I keep are the ones that Trends shows I’ve been sharing, starring and emailing. I’ll also check the posting activity. Feeds that are marked inactive, or haven’t had new posts in over a month, I’ll definitely drop.

If you use Google Reader, do you check the trends?

Check out my shared items on Google Reader.