I don’t use it frequently, but I just noticed that the WordPress.com feed reader has some functionality to concatenate and display multiple posts together for feeds that update relatively frequently. I like the fact that there’s a little less cognitive load in changing contexts from one source’s posts and those of others which have longer inter-post times.

Screencapture of the WordPress reader UI in which the New York Times feed has four items collected together despite other sources being posted between them in time.

While some don’t like feeds that aren’t ordered temporally, this seems like a useful compromise when looking at feeds with large numbers of different sources.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the way Tantek Çelik concatenates likes within his homepage.

A screencapture of Tantek's homepage showing two blocks of concatenated likes amidst other posts

Whether within a stream of posts on a personal site or within a feed reader, this UI pattern is very subtle, but incredibly useful.

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Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

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