Drinking From a Fire Hose

By Deane Barker • November 21, 2006 •

Are there RSS feeds you can’t keep up with? I have a few that I just can’t stay on top of due to posting volume. A friend of mine called it “drinking from a fire hose.” They are: DZone Slashdot Lifehacker I find with these that whenever I open Bloglines, there are a couple dozen posts. I don’t…

The author discusses the challenges of maintaining an RSS feed due to high posting volume, using the examples of DZone, Slashdot, and Lifehacker. They express disappointment due to the quality of the content but emphasize the importance of considering content volume when running a blog. The author also shares their own struggles with maintaining post volume, reducing their daily goal from 10 to three or four.

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Are there RSS feeds you can’t keep up with? I have a few that I just can’t stay on top of due to posting volume. A friend of mine called it “drinking from a fire hose.” They are:

DZone (yes, I know I love it, but I just can’t keep up)
Slashdot
Lifehacker (yes, I’ve professed my love for that one too…)

I find with these that whenever I open Bloglines, there are a couple dozen posts. I don’t have the time or inclination to read them all right then, so I leave them. Then, next time, there are more. Eventually Bloglines tops out at 200 unread posts, and I click on the blog title just to get rid of the unread and start over.

It’s a little heart-breaking, because all of them have such great content. But that’s something to consider when you’re running a blog. The automatic train of thought is, “I’ll just throw everything out there and people will read what they want.” Not true – too many posts can overwhelm people, and they consequently won’t read any. The volume of your content can render the quality of your content moot.

We’ve discussed posting volume before, and we’ve struggled with it around here. How many posts is too many? How many is just right? I used to shoot for 10 a day, but it wasn’t maintainable. I think we average three or four a day now.

What blogs do you enjoy, but you either don’t subscribe too or don’t read regularly because posting volume is too high?