Darren Rowse at ProBlogger asked his readers about their feed reading habits. In particular he wanted to know what makes people unsubscribe from a Blog feed. I have been cleaning out my Google Reader lately and I have found myself unsubscribing to feeds for the following reasons:

1. Partial Feeds: I still click through to the originating site even if I’ve read a full feed. Partial feeds seem like a cheap way to force me to do something I already do so I just unsubscribe to pages that use them out of spite.
2. Poor Grammar: Mine is not perfect, nor is my spelling, but seeing bad grammar and poorly constructed sentences on a regular basis makes me lose respect for the author. A lot of the errors I see could be corrected with a quick run through the spell and grammar check on Microsoft Word so there is very little excuse to post before checking.
3. Repetitive Posts: I know that sometimes the media gets carried away with certain topics (Anna Nicole, Oscar Coverage, etc.), but I expect more from a blogger. Unless your blog focuses on a specific topic, I don’t want to see 10 posts on a specific topic over the course of a week.
4. Off The Topic: When topic focused blogs go off topic and stay off topic for a while I just lose interest. If it is a topic focused blog I signed up to read posts on a specific topic and related items.
5. Furry Friends and Cute Babies: I don’t want to see pictures of your kids or your pets unless they are doing something that is really special. I set the bar very high when I use the term special — that video of a cat sitting at a piano and attempting to play was on the low end of what I consider special. Truth be told no one really wants to hear about your munchkins or pets unless it is a blog that regularly features appearances by them. If I am subscribed to a blog with this kind of material, I most likely know the blogger quite well.
6. Regurge: Please try not to regurgitate stories you found on the last ten sites you visited when you were reading through your own feeds. Chances are I’ve read half of them or I subscribe to similar feeds and will get to that news from an official news source as well. Not every tech site has to report on the newest USB gadget as soon as it drops. Go for a weekly roundup of new gadgets if that is not the primary focus of your blog.
7. Miscategorization: Don’t try to pass your blog off as a tech or gadget blog if you only make one post about a gadget every week or so. If it’s a personal blog, don’t be embarrassed to let it be a blog about you and your experiences. Don’t try to pass your opinions off as fact or try to spin them as real news either. If you think your readers are fooled, you’re wrong and Fox News already does a better job of it.
8. Video Clips: If you are going to post links to video clips in your blog, at least put some text in the blog post. Spending an extra second to tell the viewer what the video is about should be common sense.
9. Excessive Updates About the Blog: You don’t need to tell me about every update you do to your theme, how you’re changing your blog, and constantly apologize for being offline or for not posting constantly. We are human and most bloggers work alone. We understand that your posting frequency will change depending on what is going on in your life. If you want to put some ads on your blog to pay the web hosting bills, more power to you. If you made a change that may have caused down time or screwed something up for the readers, by all means explain yourself. Just don’t do it every day.
10. Blogging about Blogging: Don’t do it. I’m guilty of it as well and I’ve made an effort to stop it. Blogging about blogging is the snake eating its tale (ha ha).

[Link to What makes you unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed?]

I have been addicted to web syndication since the moment I read about the concept. I have been using a feed reader (mostly desktop readers until Google Reader’s second incarnation came long) for almost four years now (scary). It all started with Shrook on the Mac which I fell in love with. It also helped me to find topics to blog about initially and saved me a couple of hours a day trying to find the news stories I was really looking for.

I remember when my OPML only had 20 or 30 feeds in it. I am currently subscribed to 193 feeds in Google Reader right now. I recently removed the 15 or so job board feeds I read regularly because I am currently employed and don’t need to read them everyday. I’ve also started to get rid of feeds that seem to only provide me duplicate information (I recently dumped Engadget for Gizmodo which is far more sarcastic and punchy). A few months ago I dropped all of my feeds based on Windows related topics which cut back about 15 or so. I realized that I just wasn’t reading the content because I had no love left for Windows.

I used to read the feeds of all of the old TechTV personalities especially shortly after the mass exodus and before it became G4. I haven’t kept up with them for about two years now with the exception of Leo who is unavoidable especially if you are a Mac user or fan. Right now I seem to be finding and subscribing to more DIY, GTD, and blogs run by individuals than anything else. My reading habits seem to change like the direction of the wind.

I am going to try to cut back on my feeds and purge the feeds of sites that aren’t updated on a regular basis. I have also noticed that the time I spend reading feeds in Google Reader is getting longer and longer each day. I spend far too much time during the day stopping to browse the feeds. I am going to limit my feed reading to twice a day and see if I can make it through the withdrawals. Wish me luck.