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!

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Blogging RSS subscriptions

38 comments

david deangelo November 13, 2007 at 4:52 am

Thanks Pearl.

I will put on the email subscription soon. Need to set up feedburner as I have not used it before!

pelf November 14, 2007 at 5:32 am

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 :)

Jobs In Israel November 14, 2007 at 8:45 am

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.

pearl November 14, 2007 at 8:29 pm

@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!

Mike Scott November 14, 2007 at 11:46 pm

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.

jblu November 15, 2007 at 2:59 am

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.

Mike Scott November 15, 2007 at 10:26 am

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.

Sueblimely November 15, 2007 at 10:48 am

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.

pearl November 15, 2007 at 2:26 pm

@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 :)

pearl November 15, 2007 at 3:14 pm

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 :)

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