Syndication saturation.
I’m actually a little afraid to fire up my news reader. I know I’ll be bombarded with thousands, possibly tens of thousands of new entries (though I am subscribed to a few high-volume feeds, like del.icio.us bookmarks tagged “RSS”, which tends to exacerbate things). Why do I feel compelled to read them all?
Part of the problem is that some of my feeds are like the CNN scrolling news ticker; ephemeral, forgettable. If I missed it, no big deal—if it was important I’ll see it go by again. But some of my feeds are like email; these are the high-signal weblogs and news sites of the world, friends’ pages, and the like. These I’ll want to go digging through, like the pile of mail and magazines on my kitchen table.
Teasing these two categories apart is not a problem which is currently addressed by newsreader software. I’ll have to read the ones I want, and then (“cancel anytime”?) mark the others as read without glancing at them.
But until I’m done reading through the precious feeds, I’ll see that icon in my Dock, with an enormous number floating menacingly above it.