Tag: FeedReaderFriday

Replied to a post by Kathleen FitzpatrickKathleen Fitzpatrick (hcommons.social)
Apropos of my last boost (https://post.lurk.org/@liza/109621185749177937), as well as Chris Long's recent suggestion (https://hcommons.social/@cplong/109604628817946536), I've just logged into Feedly for the first time in eons. 19 of the feeds I had been following are now not-found, and another 18 have been inactive for a period of a year or longer. I'm doing some significant pruning, but also looking for new feeds to add. If the move out of Twitter has got you contemplating blogging again, send me a link!
A group of people have been posting with the tag with some people and resources for just this sort of effort. 

Given limited instance search, this link may be better: https://mastodon.social/tags/FeedReaderFriday

I’ve also recently run across: https://bringback.blog/

If you’re repopulating a feed reader, I’ve got a long list in which folks may find some interesting tidbits hiding: https://boffosocko.com/about/following/. Potentially easier if your reader supports OPML.

For this week, I’m recommending a feed reader—a different sort of feed reader: https://fraidyc.at/. Kicks Condor has designed an interface that you can sort by frequency/time as well as tag. It also encourages you to read content on the person’s site directly, so you get the web experience they chose rather than a more vanilla interface.
In addition to following people on Mastodon in your feed reader via , you can also follow hashtags which appear there. For example, to follow try: https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb.rss. #FeedReaderFriday 

Keep in mind that the output of these feeds will be instance specific, and the tag feed will only get mentions from your instance and instances yours can “see” (or gets by follows with federation). So if you use a different instance, you may see more or less in your feeds. Because of its size and depth of federation, this makes mastodon.social a good bet for these sorts of subscriptions, but your experience may vary depending on your needs.

This I’m recommending:

And all three for their kindness and thoughtfulness in technology spaces.

Replied to #FeedReaderFriday 2 by john john (John's World Wide Wall Display)
Back around 2005 I was learning to blog with my class and exploring blogging. I was on a train with Ewan Mcintosh going to a conference or training event. Ewan was using NetNewWire and showed me how he us...
I’ll second following Open Culture. Caught by the River looks fascinating, and from reading and appreciating the nature-related posts in your feed John, it’s an easy add for me. Thanks, both for sharing and for your own posts!
Wonder what I’m reading? Here’s my own following list:
https://boffosocko.com/about/following/

A central list I control with associated RSS feeds & OPML files makes it portable for use in various kinds of feed/social readers.

People I love following and learning from on the web:

Kimberly Hirsh – https://kimberlyhirsh.com/ a fascinating reader, writer, educator, and fandom expert

Tom Critchlow – https://tomcritchlow.com/ – consultant, digital experimenter and bricoleur, networked writing and education

Aaron Davis – https://collect.readwriterespond.com/ – educator, edtech innovation and implementation 

Replied to a post by Chris Baca (@cdbaca@indieweb.social)Chris Baca (@cdbaca@indieweb.social) (Indieweb.Social)
One of the things I don't see often talked about in the #indieweb sphere is how "meta" it is. E.g., I enjoy reading about how devs think about FOSS, but I don't want those to be the only indie people I read. Are there folks out there that are self-hosted but are writing about philosophy or literature, doing journalism, or thinking about other interesting things? Who should I throw in my feed reader? (A favorite of mine is Alan Jacobs @ blog.ayjay.org)
They are definitely out there. Micro.blog is an entire community of diverse people with this practice (admittedly with some technophiles scattered about). You can easily set up an account and pipe a feed of your content into that network and participate from your own site (for free). If you’re into education and related topics, you’ll find people like Maha Bali who are part of the Domain of One’s Own space which is similar to . Perhaps I’ll list some more for ?

#FeedReaderFriday: A Suggestion for Changing our Social Media Patterns

In the recent Twitter Migration, in addition to trying out Mastodon, I’ve been seeing some people go back to blogs or platforms like Micro.blog, WordPress, Tumblr, WriteFreely (like Mastodon it’s a part of the Fediverse, but built for blogging instead of short posts) and variety of others. They’re looking for a place where they can truly own and share their content, often in healthier and more humane ways. Many are extolling the virtues of posting on their own website so that they own their content to protect against the sort of platform problems many are now seeing and experiencing on the rapidly dying birdsite. I’ve seen a growing number of people in/on several platforms reviving the early Twitter practice of to help people discover new and interesting people to follow.

As a result, while everyone is exploring new platforms and new online spaces for maintaining their identities and communicating, I’m going to suggest something else interesting to shift our online social patterns: Instead of spending time on Twitter, Mastodon, Instagram, or other major social platforms, start practicing by carving out some time to find and follow people’s websites directly with a feed reader or social reader. Then engage with them directly on their own websites. 

I already spend a reasonable amount of time in a variety of readers looking at both longform articles as well as social media posts (status updates, notes, bookmarks, and photos), but starting this Friday, I’m going to practice . Instead of opening up Twitter or Mastodon, I’ll actively and exclusively reach for one of my feed readers to read people’s content and respond to them directly.

As part of the effort, I’ll share people’s sites I follow and enjoy. I’ll also suggest some feed readers to try out along with other related resources. I’ll use the tag/hashtag to encourage the website to website conversation. If you’re interested in the experiment, do come and join me and help to spread the word. 

Currently I’m relying on readers like Inoreader, Micro.blog, and Monocle, but there are a huge variety of feed readers and a nice selection of even more fully featured social readers available.

Just as many people are doing the sometimes difficult but always rewarding emotional labor of helping people migrate from the toxicity of Twitter and its algorithmic feeds, perhaps those of us who have websites and use social readers could help our friends and family either set up their own spaces or onboard them to social readers in this effort? Mastodon’s decentralized nature is an improvement and provides a reasonable replacement for Twitter, but eventually people will realize some of the subtle issues of relying on someone else’s platform just as they’ve seen issues with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or the now defunct Google+. 

Feel like you’ll miss people’s content on traditional social media? There are definitely a variety of ways to follow them in a variety of feed and social readers. Not sure what RSS is? Feel free to ask. Know of some interesting tricks and tools you use to make discovering and subscribing to others’ blogs easier? Share them! Have fantastic resources for discovering or keeping up with others’ websites? Share those too. Not quite sure where to begin? Ask for some help to better own your online identity and presence. 

It may be a slow start, but I think with some care, help, and patience, we can help to shift both our own as well as others’ online social reading and correspondence habits to be kinder, smarter, and more intentional. 

What will you read on ? Who will you recommend following?

Featured photo by Dulcey Lima on Unsplash