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Information overload and the echo chamber

The more I get sucked into the vortex that is Friendfeed, Techmeme, digg, reddit, etc. the more I feel the need to break out of the echo chamber and try to find new content.

Google Reader tells me I’m subscribed to 237 feeds (about 20 or so of those are linkblogs), and that I have read about 6000 items in the last month. I’m now subscribed to about 150 people in Twitter and 100 in FriendFeed. That’s a lot of information to process – at least for me – others seem to cope better with fare more feeds, friends and followers.

Within our small world of tech blogs, it is easy fall into a rut of reading the same blogs over and over again without noticing any of the new voices that might have fresh or contrarian views.

But at the same time, how much new information can we really handle?

At this point, I’m pretty much dropping one blog out of my feedreader for every new one I discover, but that is bit frustrating as well – after all, I don’t want to miss out on good stories, either.

And unless I want to burn out, I have to just simply trust that the best stories are going to bubble up to the top, whether discovered by me or by others.

Basically, I am conflicted about this – I want to read a more diverse group of bloggers, but I can’t handle much more reading.

How do the rest of you deal with this?

It’s tough. In google reader, I rely heavily on “mark all as read” (and not feel guilty about doing that at the end of every day), using “J” to move quickly through the feeds, and periodically culling the blogs that haven’t updated in several months.

I still feel overwhelmed at times…

Sometimes, those linkblogs that I subscribe to overlap and generally share the same links. I try to take notice of this and either keep the linkblog and delete the other blog’s feed, or keep the feed and delete the linkblog. I also pay attention to the ‘Trends’ page that Google Reader offers, and if I’m reading less than 10% of the items of that site then I delete the feed. Eventually someone else will share it. I also don’t subscribe to feeds from FriendFeed and Twitter. I just go to those sites. I personally find it easier to sort through that information outside of the feed.

[...] Information overload and the echo chamber :: The Last Podcast – Frederic is beginning to feel the effects of information overload and wonders on how best to handle it. [...]

[...] Information overload and the echo chamber :: The Last Podcast – Frederic is beginning to feel the effects of information overload and wonders on how best to handle it. [...]