Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Huffington Post Truncates RSS Feed?


I was downright put out earlier this year when the Gawker RSS became truncated. With Huffington Post, it was just the final nail in the coffin.

I don't pay attention to at least 60 percent of what they post. (Even in the image above, I don't care about the three articles that you can kind of see.) Still, I was getting a general news and sometimes it would surprise me. I enjoyed the in depth episode coverage of True Blood, Mad Men, and Lost. Sometimes they would have interesting recipes.

And other times, it would be a stray piece of information that I would not have otherwise seen. Some book list posted on Huffington Post included Brady Udall, with a new book called The Lonely Polygamist. 

"Hey," I thought. "Is that the same Brady Udall who I saw speak at some point between 2004 and 2008 and who was a professor at Southern Illinois University? It is! I must immediately request this from the library!"

I browse bookstores now only occasionally. I halfway read a couple of different book websites. Its possible that it might have been years until I thought to look up Brady Udall or accidentally stumble across it, considering how long it had been since I read The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint (and enjoyed it).

There isn't really a point, except that even if I did keep subscribing to Huffington Post, I'd be less likely to read as much of it as I do now. Its possible if the feed had been truncated when Brady Udall showed up on it, I wouldn't have even seen it, unless he was in the first paragraph or the first on the list. 

And I know, clicking through isn't the worst thing in the world. But I don't do it. Because I'm in the flow of reading quickly, using keyboard shortcuts ('k' automatically opens the next article in the feed, since I read them in chronological order), and breezing by. So I unsubscribed for good, and now I know to keep better tabs on what Brady Udall is doing with his time.

[Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.]

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