As the old saying goes; when it rains, it pours. This was the case for me yesterday when it came to the application I use to read the 60+ RSS feeds that I’m subscribed to. I use an application on my HP iPaq called Egress, and it’s perfect for me because I can download updated feeds from wherever an internet connection exists, and follow the current trends and topics that abound across the blogosphere and on various news sites. However, yesterday there was a slight hiccup with the system and the main channels file which contains the feeds I’ve subscribed to became corrupt. This usually isn’t a problem as I create backups of my PDA every Sunday and Thursday but, unbeknownst to me, the backup file was corrupt and the software I’ve been using to archive my mobile device has been failing regularly for over five weeks without notification.

Of course, this is completely my fault for not paying closer attention to my automated backups, but it was an unwelcome sight nevertheless.

So, taking this as the perfect opportunity to clean up my subscriptions, I went about re-entering 43 of the 67 RSS feeds I had subscribed to. What about the other 14, you ask? Good question. These feeds had started to fall off my radar due to the changes they had made regarding RSS delivery.

See, because I rarely read a post while connected to the internet, I’m limited in the amount of secondary information sometimes required to read a post. Take, for example, the one of the originating WordPress developer’s blogs. While his RSS numbers are through the roof, it’s impossible to read while on the go because the post is really just a few sentences referencing other websites through the use of two or more links. How the heck can a mobile reader participate or otherwise be aware of a subject when they’re forced to visit two or three sites (on a portable device) before understanding the context of the poorly delivered paragraph to begin with?

On top of this, visiting some of these linked sites can be exceedingly costly from a mobile device. Even if you have one of the oh-so-trendy iPhones, you’re spending over a megabyte in data just loading some of these the graphics and flash-intensive pages. If the link is going to a C|Net or Reuters page, then the amount of data transfer is doubled or tripled because the articles are often (needlessly) broken across two or three pages for the sake of boosting advertising impressions. Despite the growing popularity of mobile web surfing, most sites fail to take into account just how annoyingly expensive it is for a person on a mobile phone or cellular-equipped PDA to visit their pages. It doesn’t take a genius to make a site mobile-ready. Heck, just visit j2fi.net from a mobile device and see. The site will automatically switch to a mobile-friendly version and consume 1/5th the data of the desktop edition.

Rant aside, there are really only three ways to lose me as an RSS subscriber: going partial, going video, and going NFL.

Going Partial

My good friend Ayisha would say that partial RSS feeds are for baboons and chimps, and I couldn’t agree more. There have been a good number of wonderful blogs out there that have captured the attention of thousands, only to later squander their new-found popularity with over-monetization of the site. One way to do this is to change the RSS feeds from full text to partial, thus ensuring that people visit your site to read the content rather than “get it for free” through an RSS reader. While this might be alright for people who have the luxury of reading their syndication feeds from a net-connected computer, really mobile users aren’t so lucky. What this means is that the people who enjoy reading the content but don’t have the opportunity to visit the pages during the week will often feel excluded from this new clique that the blogger has created and, eventually, drop the subscription.

Humans are social creatures, and we hate feeling excluded in any fashion. If a blogger wants to use partial RSS from the start, that’s up to them. However, if the site starts out with full text RSS and later switches to partial feeds, prepare to lose some readership.

Going Video

Nick over at RomanDock recently wrote about some of the reasons why it’s not always best to use a video post, and it’s easy to agree with the man. Video posts are okay in moderation, but when a site begins to be little more than a collection of embedded YouTube videos, it’s not always possible for a faithful RSS subscriber to enjoy the new direction. Videos are hard to watch because they require a good amount of attention. On top of this, most videos are not portable. While it is possible to carry videos and podcasts on a PDA for later consumption, who really wants to spend 15 minutes watching something they could have consumed in three? Also, how are we supposed to make use of this information in the future? It’s much easier for me to enter a quick series of words into my RSS search utility rather than recalling what video and which vlogger might have given me the information I want to use or comment on.

While it’s not always possible, I’d like to see sites that make the transition from blog to vlog offer a typed transcript of the video. Yes, this would double or triple the amount of work for the blogger, but it would also give that person a greater reach across the web. As far as everyone knows, Google does not penalize someone for saying the exact same thing in text as they did in a video.

Going NFL

There is one technology blog that I really enjoy which is readable only four months of the year. The other eight months of content is almost exclusively reserved for the NFL. While it’s true that I’m not a fan of American Football, I can certainly appreciate that there are millions of people out there that truly love the sport and get right into it. Unfortunately, when a site that advertises itself as a niche technology blog transitions to a 100% football blog for two-thirds of the year, I’m forced to stop reading it until some time after the Super Bowl.

One could argue that I’m just as guilty of this, writing about one subject for a few weeks before switching gears to something else, only to return to a previous topic at some later time in the future, however, I do not advertise this site as being niche anything. I have other sites for niches, and write content for two others whenever inspiration strikes.

Going … Going … Gone!

Of course, the other reason a mobile-reader would unsubscribe would be a lack of updates. This is always something that strikes me as odd because, considering all the blogs I’ve followed over the last four years, only two or three dozen people have really stuck with it. There are some people that get right involved and earn a decent second income {link: http://www.dereksemmler.com/ }, while there are others that gain a large amount of attention and fame only to disappear completely {link: http://www.bloggingthemovie.com/ }. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since the average lifespan of a blog is supposedly around 8 months. However, it’s something many other bloggers pay attention to as they watch their sites getting older, while others fail to make it past the first year.

What triggers you to clean up your RSS subscriptions? Is this a weekly thing? Do you do it whenever a site begins to bore you? I’d be interested to know what it takes to keep you interested in a site.