All Killer No Filler

The unpredicted behavior in question is what causes me to unsubscribe from a feed. Sure, sometimes I find myself simply no longer interested in the feed's topic. But that's the uncommon case.

Much more common is the feed's content itself. I decide the signal/noise ratio isn't good enough to spend my time reading the feed. Subscription->Unsubscribe...->Are You Sure?->"Yes". Bye-bye.

"Signal" entries are entries I'm interested in. "Noise" entries are ones I am not. I'll admit here the distinction is necessarily personal. However, once signal/noise <= tolerance, the feed is gone. Obviously we all have different tolerance levels, but I'm going to argue that such a tolerance always exists, and it's always nonzero.

Here's the link-up for feed producers. The standard model says post regularly. Even if you have nothing interesting to say. Gotta keep the site "live" and "fresh".

I'm telling you this model breaks when applied to feeds.

The more nonsense you consistently feed me, the worse your signal/noise gets, the more likely I'm going to unsubscribe.

From the reader's standpoint, aggregation is really different than reading a bunch of websites. I don't have to remember to visit your specific site every week/day/hour. Essentially, once I'm subscribed, there's nothing else I have to do but pick & choose and read. I'm locked in. It takes effort to change. Thus, you don't need filler. You already have my attention. Regarding feeds, filler will only hurt you.

So don't post everyday. Or even every week. My robot aggregator doesn't mind. Just post when you have something significant to say. If that's twice a day, great. Everyone's rate is different, but honor your rate even if it has a slow tempo.

I'm willing to concede this isn't black-and-white. For example, if you haven't posted something in two or three months, I'm be inclined to figure you've died and unsubscribe anyway. Even if your last post was brilliant. So I guess my advice is to post only signal entries, at least once per month. After all, if you don't have twelve significant things to say per year, perhaps you don't need a blog after all?

Update: Erik responds. Drat, I thought I could sneak that link past him (grin).

Even though Erik makes a number of "noise" postings, I still subscribe and haven't really ever entertained the idea of unsubscribing. The reason is that Erik does a good job segregating out such postings in the entry headline (I typically skip his QotD entries). Likewise, I'd imagine Erik largely ignores my PSIG meeting notices.

As for upgrading my aggregator: software based filtering sounds attractive versus my manual visual filtering. I tried PulpFiction 1.0 the day it shipped based on that feature and persistence of entries. However, my various attempts to widescreen it all failed disastrously. This bummed me out, so I went back to NetNewsWire to relive my cool-hack glory days.

Friday, June 11, 2004
12:00 AM