If you are using Google Reader, there is a new feature that I think they just launched today (since I just saw it today and marked as ‘New’) that shows your personal reading trends.
As shown here from my Google Reader trend…
Follow up:
From my 72 subscriptions, over the last 30 days I read 1,506 items, starred 54 items, and shared 0 items. To the right, I can see the items I read on a day by day basis over the past 30 days. I can also check it per time of the day and day of the week.
The two columns below is what makes it really interesting. For example, I recently subscribed to QJ.net – MMORPG Feed (I used to visit their site, before I realized I can add their feed), and I already read 113 feeds compared to the other subscriptions I have. There is also the ’starred’ data and the ’shared’ data.
The right column is the stats showing which of my subscriptions are frequently updated. For example, I’m subscribed to eWEEK Technology News, I receive 16.2 Items/Day and out of those items, I only read 12% of it. I can also check my subscriptions that are inactive the past 30 days, or simply didn’t send a new feed update. Makes it easier to track down which feeds could be dead.
The last part of the data are the “tags” or “labels” or “folders” (depending on how you use these features on your Google Reader). Quoting: The more items a tag has, the bigger it appears. The more of those items you have read, the darker it is.
Looking at my example, my gaming folder/tag/label is the biggest and does have more items tagged under it, while the general folder is the darkest, showing that I read more items from my subscriptions under the general folder.
This is a very good feature the Google Reader team added. I haven’t seen such statistics from desktop feed readers pre-Google Reader (I don’t know if they have one now). The Google Reader personal Reading Trend helps in giving a visualization of my reading habits when it comes to my feed syndications, and will help in knowing which areas I tend to ignore so now I have to improve and take time reading their feeds, and which feeds are not really helping me at all that may very well be good to be subscribed via email or to visit manually.
If you are still not yet using Google Reader or don’t know the power of RSS/Atom syndication feeds, better go to reader.google.com, add your favorite sites as your ’subscription’ and see for yourself how useful this piece of technology is.
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