When I transitioned from Blogger to WordPress for my blog, I had a fresh chance to look at my RSS feed options. On blogger, I had a ton of buttons for people to choose different options. At the time, people NEEDED more options. Now services like Feedburner help consolidate options into one service.
In the transition, I could redirect my Feedburner burn to my new blog page (new url!) and hopefully those of you following via FB had uninterrupted service. But what about everyone else? Some of the other RSS methods were confined to the old URL, so I just posted a post on my old blog asking people to resubscribe to the new one. I suspect I lost a lot of subscribers.
In many ways, this is just like cleaning out old email addresses that people don’t use anymore. I suspect many of those subscribers no longer followed the blog, so it was good house cleaning. But I’ve heard from a few people that they just lost me off their radar screen. I haven’t quite figured out what to do about that.
In all this review of feeds, I also played with my Feedburner feed which allows you to include things like your del.icio.us tags and Flickr photos. I wondered if you, dear readers, found those helpful or not. Last night I got some feedback that the photos were not so great – not that the person didn’t like my photos, but in the context of expecting blog posts, they felt out of place. I tend to agree.
Then I thought, I should ask you. What do you like in the feed? What would you prefer taken out? If there is a strong consensus, I’ll plan accordingly. If no one cares, I’ll pull out the photos for now and see if that “feels” better!
Nancy, I have been following your blog for over a year and was one of those who lost your feed for awhile. I’m glad to have it back now with all the changes. I like the variety of things you post, including the photos. For instance when I landed on the jowl bacon, it reinforced what I’m learning about your sense of humor and take on culture. I hope you will keep it all coming.
I think this question will put you in the ‘not going to please all the people all the time’ category. I would prefer not to have the Flickr posts in my reader. The other thing I don’t like is del.icio.us links. But thats just me. I just delete these posts automatically so don’t change anything because of what I say.
Hi Nancy,
I lost your feed for awhile when you switched. Had you not twittered a blog post it might have even been longer before I found it again. I like the delicious links and the posts, of course, The photos, not so much, because I also have a Flickr feed that comes into my RSS reader with new photos from my Flickr contacts, so it duplicates.
These days, possibly because of a renewed focus on politics, I’m feeling overwhelmed and over-read, so anything that drops those feeds down to something manageable but still sends me the awesome-ness that your posts bring is a wonderful thing.
I like getting just your blogposts. It throws me to get the flickr pics because I also get them in my flickr feed.
I have kept my old Feedburner feed from Phronesis. But I notice that:
a) the feed is still called Phronesis (which is an invisible thing for most people and important for some);
b) the new site feed doesn’t include the del.icio.us links and a couple of other things that appear in Phronesis. That does give me time to think if I really need to include them in posts for new subscribers.
I’d lose the Links and the Flickr pictures. If people are really interested in your del.icio.us links, then provide the RSS feed for them. The same for Flickr.
Or set up a lifestream RSS feed that grabs everything you publish and re-publishes as RSS in one place. Ziki and Tumblr both do this.
OK, here is my latest feed tweak. I took out the del.icio.us feeds. I restricted the Flickr feeds just to a certain tag. And I will look into a lifestream RSS feed, but I can’t imagine WHO would want to follow it. My family doesn’t even read my blog! LOL
But I’ll check out Ziki and Tumblr, Jack. And thanks, everyone, for the feedback. You speak up, I try to respond!