For everyone widely using social media, RSS Feeds are a blessing. They have revolutionized the way we gather information and expand our knowledge and interests. We comfortably let data come to us; an attribute of utmost importance, when we imagine what vast constellations of data are inhabiting the streams of cyberspace. All we have to do, is to decide the sources, that will send us these information. So RSS Feeds are a very comfortable service, indeed.

Mainly due to my master thesis research, I have been using RSS Feeds extensively and have enjoyed its assistance. I have mentioned before, that I have been following almost 100 blogs and news sites; and I wasn’t just scanning the information coming, I really read them - and I still do. I don’t think the curse of RSS Feeds lies on the fact, that it provides too much information. I actually don’t believe there is such thing as too much information.

The Curse

No, the problem lies somewhere else. RSS Feeds are too comfortable. What does this mean?
Depending on our time and engagement, we settle down with 50, 70, 100 or more subscriptions. We read the news daily and get enough input and inspiration for our next blog posts. We also participate in most of the communities we are involved in and we have in a way succeeded in making our presence felt and even established a connection with the fellow bloggers.

But then the curse emerges, a curse we actually do not realize.
We stop worrying about other blogs, we stop worrying about new subscriptions, we have developed our nice, warm environment and we are satisfied with it.
This is bad for 3 reasons:

1. We forget the strength of weak ties

Strong ties are our close friends, while weak ties are mostly people we are acquainted with. Mark Granovetter’s research on people looking for a new job in 1973 concluded, that 27,8% of them found on from their weak ties, while 16,7 % from their strong ties. He didn’t disregard the value of strong ties, but he pointed out the importance of weak ones.
Having a steady, well established network of subscriptions constitutes a well founded, strong base, but it also makes us forget the value of weak ties.
How many of these subscriptions are actually well established connections of yours?

2. We lose the sense of a challenge

The fact that we are mostly participating in the blogs we are subscribed to, establishes our prestige in these communities. The author knows who we are and other regular commentators are also aware of our positions. But this evolves in a routine behavior: reading the same blogs, writing comments, starting an interesting discussion with (almost) always the same people.
The challenge of writing a great comment, of saying something really insightful is lost. These people know you, you don’t have to prove yourself. You are allowed to say something silly or not well researched; they will understand.

3. We disregard diversity

People have a natural tendency to start relationships with like-minded people. That is absolutely logical and understandable. But online diversity plays a fundamental role. It brings new voices into the discussion and helps in the correct aggregation of information.
When we constantly find ourselves in the same circles of discussion, we tend to associate with a biased group. That is not necessarily wrong, but it might not be that thought provoking.

Removing the curse

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the RSS curse. I’m very satisfied with the small network I have developed in the past months and definitely don’t want to lose it.
But when I remember on the first times I was blogging, things were much more intriguing. I was searching for new cool blogs, trying to decode the bloggers. I was cautious of my comments and remarks.
Now things are much more comfortable.
So I thought, that it is time to make things more interesting; to get ride of the RSS curse.

• I will start doing guest posts on blogs I like and of course am also opening my blog for guest posts. I’m already preparing an article for superbloggingtips and if you have any writings on your shelf you want to show to another public, contact me.
• I will delete all my subscriptions; by all I mean most of them. I can’t unsubscribe from my strong ties, I like their stuff and I like their feedback.
• Consequence of the above is that I will start searching for new blogs. This will expand my network and pose a challenge to me.

The RSS curse is like smoking. You get it out of your system for a month, but in the end you get hooked up again.
So I’m still thinking on new ways to use RSS in its full potential without getting stuck with its negatives.

As always I’m open for suggestions, feedback and from now on your articles.

I just read this post on rssHugger. In short it is about a new blogging service, where every blogger can submit his work and get tons of traffic. Now to do that you have 2 options:

1. Either pay 20$ to have your page listed     or
2. write a review on rssHugger.

(in both cases your blog is listed for 10years)

I have some objections here. What is so different on rssHugger from other similar services (let’s say bloggingzoom)? Reading the about page, it seems to me rssHugger works with basic viral marketing thinking. If only a 10% of the visitors would subscribe to a blog, then 11100 visitors subscribe to 110 blogs. I don’t think it works that way.

Let’s say it works that way. Would you advertise a service in order to get listed in their site? This sounds to me like selling out.

These are the blogs that give a fresh view to the blogosphere. Some of them follow the current news and provide a different perspective. Others are simply out of any trends and tactics and just blog for the fun of it. And then there are the ones, that are just very well informed; you say something and their answer is right on spot.

In simpler words, these blogs do the boogie-woogie.

1. Digital Media World. An extensive study of social media and social networks. His insights on online fooling-around are very intriguing. Can your sex-life online influence your real-life relationship? A VR user once said: “RL [real life] is just a window among others, and not necessarily my favorite one”
2. CyberStreetReport. Although Reno wants his blog to evolve into “the ultimate link dropping station”, he still suggests to reduce your posting rate.
3. Social Networking Articles. Live from the field. All the nasty stuff you need to know about social networking. Even the, sometimes ‘unsocial’, web designers get some juice here.
4. Blogging Bits. This guy has found a way to get your blog more traffic and subscribers will you’re sleeping. Forget writing, just have a nap.
5. Dembot. Staying true to traditional blogging. A variety of issues covered (from the Kenya crisis to the Gilmore Girls).
6. Kasi-Blog. One more traditional blogger, with a revolutionary flare. Hope he continues blogging, while writing his Master Thesis. Hang in there Karsten. It’s just a phase, it will pass.
7. The Ed Techie. I can’t really explain it, but this blog is always on the top in my RSS Feed aggregator. Maybe because he sometimes mentions Wittgenstein and you just can’t argue with that.
8. Social Media Trader. When we surf the web, he rides it. His lists are just incomparable.
9. RoboRobert. He is robots and you can too! Great name, great header, great robots.
10. EpiBlogger. If you hate teletubbies as much as I do, maybe it’s time to reconsider. There is knowledge everywhere.

So that’s the list of my freshest subscriptions in the blogosphere. I’m always trying to expand my feed, so stay tuned in. More dancing blogs will be introduced.
If you want some more boogie-woogie blogs, take a look at my blogroll. They sure can dance.

I tried repeatedly yesterday to log into bloggingzoom and it just didn’t work out. I thought it was a typical maintenance or something of that kind. But it seems it was cracked. Cortney Tuttle ascribes this act to the fact that

BloggingZoom is growing very quickly and that obviously poses a threat to quite a few different people. I’m not going to name any names but there are a few different groups and individuals that would stand to benefit if they could slow down the growth of the site.

A couple of bloggers have also posted about this, but it seems there hasn’t been a big fuss about it. Digg didn’t have any post about it (I just submitted one), stumbleUpon’s post was liked by 13 people and I just posted the subject on mixx. I wonder why.

Maybe BloggingZoom isn’t the kind of site that will bring waves of traffic to your blog, but the community is serious enough and is really participating in the blogging process.

By participating I mean, that users are actually reading the posts, subscribing and adding comments. Something that happens very seldom in digg for example. Also the fact that a submitter must write an at least 350letter description, speaks for the earnestness of the users.

Anyway, hope they get out of the problem soon.

Just a small footnote here: Hackers are people who enjoy exploring the potential of software and technology without any malicious intent. Crackers are the nasty ones.

15 plugins for minimalism just doesn’t sound right.

Yes, it does!
Wordpress rules! It really does. There are plugins for every taste and every school.

The problem is that plugins are so cool, you can get hooked up pretty fast. Before you know it, you have frak-o-meter, moon phase and hottaimoijiruna running.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can clutter your blog like hell. Readers will just get lost in all this information, or just play around with your sidebar and forget your content.

And of course your blog will be slow like a turtle walking on honey. Just one digg or stumble will get your site ’suspended’.

Cut it down to the basics

So here are the plugins to keep your blog perfectly functionable, secure and simple.

Tagging

• Configurable Tag Cloud: categories are so 80s. Tags are intuitive and this is the simplest tool for tagging.

• Simple Tags: Manage all your tags. Fast and easy.

• WP Tags to Technorati: Now that you are a real tag-jedi, send them directly to technorati.

Security

• Akismet: Spammers leave us alone.

• Wordpress Database Backup: Schedule backups, or die.

SEO

• All in one SEO Pack: Let someone else do all the SEO dirty work.

• No Self Pings : Stop sending trackbacks to yourself, whenever you link to a post of yours.

• Google XML Sitemaps: Help google see you.

Promotion

• Community Cloud: Thank your active readers with a link to their site.

• Popularity Contest: it analyzes several variables (comments, trackbacks, views, etc) to show you which post of yours is most popular. Great combo with the popularity contest widget.

• Popularity Contest Widget: Promote your best stuff.

• Similar Posts: Promote similar articles. Good to keep readers browsing in your blog.

• Subscribe to comments: Instead of having 2 monologues in your blog (your post and the comments), enable a dialogue. Readers subscribe to the post they commented with a simple click and follow the responses.

• Contact Form: Lazy people just fill out the form.

Speed

• wp-cache

• wp-super cache

Do you find some plugins mentioned above unnecessary? I would gladly strip the list (and my blog) down.

Blogging has enabled every John, Dick and Mary (I’m a John by the way) to write his/her personal thoughts, ideas or ambitions. Depending on the quality of the material some blogs get more readers, while others are lost in the sea.
There are many ways to improve the traffic of your blog, but in the end it always comes down to quality content. But quality content implies only the body of the text; how it is formulated, expressed, written.
What most of us usually forget to take into consideration is, that the structure of the content is also a fundamental key of the content itself.

3 Sad facts about web-content and how to overcome them

1. Sad Fact:
web-readers don’t actually read your content (sorry, but it’s true), they scan it. Many eyetracking researches have been conducted and all of them conclude, that online people scan the text by following an F-pattern. This means headline and sidebar get the most attention on a site.
Solution:
Chunking. A chunk may be a small paragraph, a bulleted list, a graphic, anything that will act as a landmark.

2. Sad Fact:
you may think of it as text, but it’s really hypertext. This means, that your text is from definition non-linear. Readers may click a link in the middle of your text and stop reading it.
Solution:
Coherence; each chunk of your text should make sense on its own.

3. Sad Fact:
chunking may bring attention to the text itself, and not to its subject. Images, banners, ads are ignored by the readers. Actually, they do not only ignore the graphics, they ignore the content all together.
Solution:
Use graphics, boldface, capitals, etc sparingly. Choose wisely, which part of the text you want to emphasize. Don’t emphasize the whole body!

Start a Meme

Can you imagine the difference between web-structured text and print text?

My first post ever was about social representations. A more or less scientifical approach on the subject; absolutely impossible for web-content. Today I edited the post and made it more web-friendly (as far as it was possible). So if you want to see the difference check out my very first post.

The readability and consequently the traffic of your blog will increase drastically, if you just pay attention to the structure of your posts.
To test this, find an old post of yours, which you think it could improve. Do the improvements you think necessary, without deleting your original post and trackback to this post here. I’ll make a list of all the posts, which improved their readability.

Additional Resources on the subject

• the writings of usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

• Imnakoya brings some interesting observation on the subject.

• Writing for effective web pages is aa post with some insightful points. (although I disagree with a couple of them).

• I have also written a short essay on the subject, which you can download here (pdf).
• and a site to check the readability of your  content

Imagine that: You are a blogger; new one. you really don’t know the rules of the game, you just try everything out. You get the best, cheapest option you can get (wordpress) and you just move on. You just install the basics (akismet).

Things go good. You start with 30-40 readers (readers not subscribers) and you move on. You get in average about 1.25 spam a day. Time goes by. You have reached a public of about 400 readers a day, numbers are increasing. What do you notice?

You get about 6 spam a day (all blocked by akismet).

But your posts are really good. People start to like you. You are from the lucky ones, who reach about 1000 readers a day. You think to yourself: I’m happy.

You receive great emails. You remember this one, where paypal (or ebay, you don’t really know) made a mistake and paid you 43,78$ for a sale you didn’t make. You think to yourself: I’m happy.

Akismet blocks daily more mail. It’s now up to 30. You delete them twice a day.

But wait, heavy windows start poping, while you write. POKER, STRIP, PORN, WHERE DO YOU HIDE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER?, something is wrong here.

You check your paypal account. You never got 43,78$; something is wrong here. You run a full ad-aware check. Windows crash and boot. Coincidence. You run a full ad-aware check. Windows crash and boot. You’re nervous. You try again and again; Windows crash and boot. You google it, with another pc. You have to format. damn.

You’re angry. You install linux. Nothing works perfect (or easy), but at least its safe. You log in to your wordpress blog. During the 2 days you were offline, fighting, you got 300 spam mail, blocked by Akismet. You’re happy; you’re popular.

(wall of spam from chotda)