How do you prefer to subscribe? via Email or RSS?
I’ve been swamped with more and more blogs that are landing in my favorites folder or different readers. I have used Google Reader, majority of the times but also like to use Bloglines and Netvibes as well as FireFox but lately I have felt inundated with the RSS subscriptions and have been signing up via email subscriptions!
I also have a few newsletter subscriptions albeit very few and they are enjoyable because they bring me to the blog if I haven’t checked what they’ve been doing lately….
Oh, I do employ a lot of the techniques described by the experts to make these readers more organized. As a matter of fact, I collected some good links in this post Google Reader hacks – repository; but it seems this is an ongoing problem.
I am sure most of you are reading hundreds of feeds and some must also be using more than one means of getting to your favorite blogs.
So, here are some of my questions:
Do you prefer to subscribe via RSS readers OR via email?
AND If you use RSS readers,
1) which reader do you prefer for most of your subscriptions?
2) Do you share your subscriptions with others since most of the Readers provide that facility!
I always subscribe via RSS – my email is jammed up and distracting enough for me. With the RSS feeds, I can control how and when I view with much greater control.
I use Google Reader exclusively. I tried using Streamy for a bit but Reader is just so elegant and it is so easy to subscribe to and manage my feeds.
I did have a shared article widget on my blog for a bit but I’ve removed it. They just introduced a way to create a blogroll from your feeds which is nice – I have that on my list of things to look at this week.
SB
I haven’t heard about shared articles widget..but sounds nice.. I’ve used blogrolling also for a few years now and still like to check out their top 500 blogs… I like google reader too, but I have this urge never to depend on just one of the services.. and I switch between bloglines and google quite a bit…
thanks for sharing Scott
I use an RSS reader – I want to use email for important messages and not to let me know when a blog has been updated so I want to keep that separate. However, I’m not against using more than one reader or some other tool that I don’t know about yet in addition. The reader I use now is Google.
Interesting. I will be keep coming back to this article to see the responses. At the moment, I am only allowing people to subscribe via rss readers and not email. I am looking to introduce email subscriptions via feedburner.
For all my RSS i use Google Reader since they activate the search function.
But i don’t use RSS for all. For example when i POST a comment, or i open a thread in a forum, i like to use email subscription with a dedicated email account.
Best Regards.
I actually prefer RSS, but since David Airey suggested I should put a subscribe to comments field (which was pretty damn hard to integrate because of the less flexible theme I use – I will have to change that!!!)
I let people subcribe to comments via email too.
And personally I do prefer RSS to subscribe.
If you want to reach your subscribers easily and professionally via email, I recommend FeedBlitz
You can manage your RSS subscriptions with Backpack.
Of course there are many other options. But I am in a rush to finish a project.
Hmm… It’s depend. I would prefer feed reader when I’m working on my own laptop or computer and I’ll prefer email subscription if I don’t have my own laptop or computer to host my feed data. :)
I prefer subscribing by email. I tried Google Reader, I subscribed to a lot of blogs, but I never remember to open it. Email is much simpler. At least for me.
teeni: I have multiple email accounts and some accounts are set up only for various subscriptions, not just blogs, but other sites I sign up with….. e.g. careerbuilder, dice or epicnews are some ;)
Oh David… you should always provide that option to people who do not feel comfortable with RSS or do not understand what RSS is!
Hi Ricardo… Google reader’s search function is surely my favorite too… and Im not sure Comment subscription via email is what I use, im not sue its available any other way though…
welcome to this blog Ricardo… please visit again..
hey Ken… yeah, both are useful in different situations… thanks for coming back! tc and kit
Hey I prefer using RSS reader and RSS bandit has become my recent favorite and I’m falling in love with it!
pearl: thank you for the “welcome”. I’m going to put your RSS on my reader :)
Nice Regards, Riccardo Giuntoli.
this is the first time I am hearing about RSS Bandit…just checked out their site and probably will try it soon… thanks Mayank… you always have something new to teach me :) tc and kit
you are welcome Ricardo… :) and thanks for subscribing too…
tc and stay in touch!
Hi Pearl
I only have one Email subscription which is a daily round up (Search Engine Land) – all the rest are RSS. I too am an avid fan of Google Reader, but don’t as yet share my subscriptions.
Let us know if you find a good alternative :)
@Mig… My akismet caught your comment ‘coz of links :) sorry! I’ve heard a lot about feedblitz but never really looked into it… I use BackPackit but never knew you could use it for managing subscriptions!?! you’d have to tell me how you do that….:) thanks for stopping by even when you are busy … tc
Simonne… Now why your comment was in Akismet, is beyond my comprehension! you were right in saying we think alike :) I do have a few email subscriptions too ‘coz I always want to know how things work and feel.. but most of them are in readers…
Hey Meg… I will be trying different services everyone mentioned here, but this seems to be the ongoing problem, unless, I start unsubscribing from the ones I don’t find interesting any more, which, of course, is never the case :)
I switch between the three I mentioned, netvibes, google reader and bloglines – but today ive been reading about RSS Bandit as Mayank mentioned above and it seems pretty interesting so far… will let you know :)
Thanks Pearl.
I will put on the email subscription soon. Need to set up feedburner as I have not used it before!
I prefer to subscribe via a reader than by email because I only want emails to arrive in my emails, not notifications that a blog has been updated.
I used to use Bloglines but recently switched to Google Reader so that I do not have to login to another service, especially when I’m not using my own personal computer :)
As a reader, I prefer RSS. I can then use Google Reader to quickly glance the day’s posts from the 150+ feeds that I follow, plus my inbox isn’t overwhelmed.
As a blogger, I prefer when my subscribers sign up via email because then I can connect with them one-on-one.
@Pelf: I use my secondary email accounts for a lot of the subscriptions (shopping, newsletters and other memberships I have to organizations etc) not necessarily for blogs…
@Jacob: different means for different scenarios work best.. it seems when I mentioned ‘email’ everyone thinks blogging subscriptions, I should have been clear… :)
thanks for commenting guys… tc and stay in touch!
Well, I’m not one of the ones who keep up with hundreds of feeds. I have 14 blog friends that I try to keep up with, and I haven’t been doing a good job lately.
Funny thing though, you mentioning all of these comments getting picked up by spam, I realized that I haven’t checked min in awhile. I had 174 that have been picked up. Wow!
I better go through them now. Thanks for the reminder Pearl.
I prefer to subscribe via email…for me, it’s easier to keep track of. I have multiple email accounts, and I have one set specifically for subscriptions. But for the blogs that I like to read daily, I have those subscriptions go to my main account.
My preference is to subscribe to blogs with RSS, and then subscribe to comments through email. I get to my email a lot more often than I get to the RSS reader.
My Reader of choice is Google Reader. Bloglines is really good too though.
Hi Pearl
Sorry I have not been visiting for a while, not enough time in the day to even visit my favorite bloggers lately!
I have my firefox default reader set to bloglines for feeds I think may be of interest to my blog readers and for my own blogging purposes. That way I can have a link in my sidebar for those interested in looking. As this list is huge now I tend to only look at bloglines for reference purposes.
My favorite bloggers, I subscribe to by email. If there is not an email subscribe option on the blog I use RssFwd to create the email feed.
Other blogs that I like to keep up with for research purposes I subscribe to headers only in thunderbird’s inbuilt newsreader. The titles are usually descriptive enough for me to see if I need to read the full post. I can skim through a lot of feeds quickly this way.
There are times (like the last couple of weeks) where feed emails and newfeeds are building up! Hence I end up commenting very late :-)
I use CoComment to follow comments rather than email subscribe. It is much easier to follow the thread of conversatons this way and my inbox is not overloaded even more.
@hey Mike… I’ve been noticing lately that a lot of the legitimate comments get trapped in Akismet… don’t have a clue why! another post idea :) thanks for coming back with the update :)
@jblu: welcome! you are like me in keeping multiple email accounts :)
Hey Sue.. don’t be sorry….I’m glad you finally made it here :) You know, I had completely forgotten about thunderbird’s newsreader! I’m going to try it soon… I used to use it before i started blogging and then somehow forgot!! AND I didn;t know about RssFwd either :) you are so resourceful!!
I did try CoComments for a while but then had to give it up – don’t remember why.. but i do subscribe to comments via email.. I somehow am loving bloglines more and more with their new features…
off I go to see how your blog is coming up now :)
In my case, I can’t say the same. All of mine, except for one, was spam. Either spam comments for cars and pron, or they were trackbacks from splogs.
So I can’t complain. Not sure what is going on with yours, but then I don’t get nearly as many comments as you do.
I am always the chosen one I know!! and with spam comments getting lengthier by the second, its becoming more and more difficult to browse thru them to look for any good comments trapped in there!
I never thought about dedicating an email account for that stuff. I guess I just have such a hard time as it is to remember all my sign-ins and passwords. Yikes. My little incredible shrinking brain. LOL.
I always subscribe to feeds using Google Reader. I appreciate the way I am able to tag entries that I may want to reference later, and it integrates well with all the other stuff I have attached to my igoogle page.
I can skim new posts, check the weather and watch my calendar all on a single page this way.
@teeni: naaah :) you are fine… we all forget them… may be writing them somewhere and keeping them safe would help? :)
@Chris: Google reader is great but I’m also a bit cautious in general about relying on just one source for just about everything…. what if google started to charge for all its services one day? don’t get me wrong, I use their documents and calendar, google base and page creator, the desktop and just about every service, but I also use other apps for the same services in case I ever have to divorce Google ;) some paranoia :) but it helps… thanks for stopping by!
I’ve used just about everything, but nowadays I use iGoogle – dividing things into my own tabbed categories.. for example, I filed you under Blogging.
But like all of us, it’s just too much.. I’m thinking of seeing if I can use Mac’s new Mail and write some filter rules.
So many posts :-)
I use iGoogle also but I am just getting a bit paranoid these days with Google so am using netvibes more and more, and already have 6 pages with millions of links :)
One of these days I need to buy a Mac!! I’ve had too many friends talk down to my little pc :lol:
You definitely need to go Mac. There is no longer any question about it – Vista is horrible and basically, it’s over: time to switch.
I hadn’t seen Netvibes.. I’ll look into it.