It's Time to Move Beyond the RSS Reader

If you find that it feels like work to go through your RSS feeds, then you're doing it wrong. Plain and simple. Your whole argument for why RSS readers are bad seems to consist of "I have too many feeds", and "I have a lot of other programs open at the same time."

I have around 40 feeds right now, and I look forward to updates because I'm subscribed to a lot of interesting content without a whole bunch of filler. But here's the thing: even if I don't have time to read everything, I just click "mark all as read." That's why that button exists. The world doesn't end when I click it. It's not like e-mail where I have to read through everything to make sure I don't need to reply to someone. I continue on with my day and await future updates.

The whole argument about an "app-centric world" and having so many things open at once is completely irrelevant because it rests on the faulty assumption that RSS readers are demanding of users. They're not, if you're using them efficiently. And even if they were, I have a really hard time believing that having 30+ tabs and 10+ programs open at once is "not atypical". Maybe for the extremely heavy web users, but not for the average person.

If you insist on being subscribed to a ton of RSS feeds and only want the best posts, then perhaps you'd like Digg Reader. I haven't explored it too much, but they display a little dot beside the most popular items (as determined by social media). I'm pretty sure NewsBlur also tries to figure out which content you're the most interested in, but I haven't tried it out either.