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I noticed that the way I blog is changing over time and one of the main reasons is the tools social networks make available to me.

For instance, I avoid writing blog posts  to just cover a press release which has already been covered by many other  blogs I read. What I do, sometimes, is to share it on Google Reader so that this shared item will immediately appear on my Twitter stream as well as on my FriendFeed stream. This happens unless I want to give my personal take to the news (not just “I like it”, “I hate it”), in that case I write a blog post but I try to give it a different format than a simple news reporting.

Another example is when I read a news on FriendFeed or Twitter which I think is worth sharing.  In that case I just “like it” along with a comment or retweet it so that I make it available to my followers, too.

Moreover, I don’t rush to be the first to report a news, I really don’t care about this. Since blogging is not my first activity, the time is never enough and when I come accross a news it’s likely to be already reported by someone else.

I also like what  Skype Journal is doing, that is making available someone else’s tweet by posting a screenshot to the tweet itself on their blog. Love it.

All that said, what do you think? Is the way you blog somehow influenced by social networks?

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Image by Josh Bancroft via Flickr

Causal and not engaged one-shot readers or faithful subscribers? Well, no doubt, the latter.

I was noticing that while the number of pageviews of this blog is growing more and more (in the range of 1200-1500 / day) the number of RSS subscribers is quite frozen since I crossed 500 readers. Now it’s usually in the range 500-600, while I noticed that there are many recurring visitors that don’t use RSS but come straight to the website. Why ?!?

My invite is: SUBSCRIBE. With the new format of this blog, there will be news and articles which will be available for RSS subscribers only. Those will be tagged with the category “RSS Only” and I’ll not make them available to visitors. Those will be indexed by Google of course, but will become fresh content for subscribers only.

Here are some ways to subscribe. Just click one of the links below to subscribe with you default RSS reader or, my recommendation, Google Reader.

Generic RSS reader

There are many other methods to subscribe. If you want to get more information about RSS, take a look at this article, very well done, which explains what RSS is and how it can save you a lot of time letting you consume more news very quickly and effectively. That article basically responds to this question:

“I don’t have a lot of extra time but I find that blogs can eat up the little bit of time I do have. I find that some people don’t update their blog daily or even weekly but I can’t remember if I checked their blog today or I check again later in the day if they didn’t update. … Do you have a good way to set this up? I don’t subscribe to blogs either, because I don’t really understand why I would do that.”

Technorati Tags: Aggregator, Feeds, Google Reader, luca filigheddu, RSS, Social Media

I don’t usually get excited so quickly for a new service I try, expecially if, at first sight, it seems a “me too“. Well, I have to say that Feedly is the exception and it’s pretty unique. After having used it for about one hour, I’m already addicted to it and can’t wait to share it with my readers.

Feedly is a Firefox extension which provides you with a whole new experience to the way you consume news from Google Reader. Google Reader is great but Feedly offers so many improvements that you’ll never miss it in terms of user interface.

First of all we have to say that Feedly relies completely on Google Reader and it is synchronized with it. That said, any action you perform on Feedly is automatically translated into the correspondent in Google Reader.

Secondly, sharing news on Twitter or Friendfeed has never been easier. You can also “like” an article or post to Friendfeed/Twitter directly from within Feedly.

The other great fact about Feedly is the way it brings the news to you. There are many different views available and many filters so that you can make sure only the most relevant news are highlighted and shown to you and when you have many hundred RSS subscriptions, this feature becomes particularly useful.

Another great option is the list of the top readers of certain blogs your read. For example, when I click on any specific Google Reader tag, i can see a box on the right with the top readers of the news which are tagged that way.

Feedly also provides you with a great way to perform a “springcleaning” of your feeds, highlighting the feeds where there is less activity or that you read less….

… but it also recommends new sources you could be interested in according to what currently read.

There is much more with Feedly (like The Wall, the annotation tool, APIs… ) and I highly recommend to check it out. For eager consumers of news and people addicted to social media, Feedly is a must have.

My guess? I wouldn’t be surprised to see Feedly as part of Google very soon, too.

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Technorati Tags: facebook, feedly, friendfeed, GoogleReader, luca filigheddu, RSS, twitter