July 20, 2010

• Blog Subscriptions and Time-Stamping

  One of the most frequent complaints on xanga has to do with time-stamping (the other most frequent complaints are probably… grammar, drama, and dearricky?) Various ideas proposed to fix the problem (including this one, proposed by myself) have fallen upon deaf ears thus far (as have every single other idea proposed in the last two years. I don’t know why people even continue to make them.) I desperately wanted a way for blogs I’d already read to stop appearing back in my inbox when time-stamped. I really hate being bombarded, but I also hate missing posts, and I know I’m not the only one.

  In the mean time, I’ve also been looking for a way to keep track of blogs off xanga. People like novelle360, who originated on xanga but later moved, have continued to write blogs I want to read. Of course, it also means I can no longer subscribe through my normal xanga interface. I tried RSS readers, which turned out to be a pain in the ass, and twitter, which is annoying and fails too often, but ultimately fell back on simply book-marking, and remembering to click once in a while, and then reading backward to catch any entries I might have missed.

  Anyway, so the other day I was on facebook (which I do exceedingly rarely, because that’s obnoxious enough on its own… friend me at facebook.com/nikbv!) and I noticed a “friend” had linked her blog post to facebook through something called bloglovin’. I then pulsed, asking if anybody had heard of it and… it seemed nobody had. So, I put on my wading boots and investigated, alone.

  
  Click

  It was scary. It was, at times, quit alarmingly full of fashion blogs (the native bloglovin’ community is apparently entirely made up of fashionistas and home decorators). But, I think it’s actually a really useful tool. See, I’ve created an account, and I added in not only all my favourite xangans, but also all my favourite blogs off xanga. Simply type in the url, hit follow, and bam! You then get a list of all the unread blog posts from those blogs (from the moment of following. It doesn’t give you a million back-posts). You then simply click on them, and read. When you click on a post, it goes grey on the list, and moves down. After you read a post (or mark it as read) you never need to see it again! Ever!

  On the other hand, if you really love it, you can hit the “like” button and keep it handy. You can also click on the post at the top of your to read list, and then, once you read (or decide to skip the post), hit the next button on a floating bloglovin’ bottom bar, and go automatically to the next blog entry on your list.

  I found all this incredibly convenient, and have been messing around with this for the past few days (so, if you’ve seen footprints from me with the referee being some bloglovin’ link, this is why). The only two problems I can find are this: firstly, if the xangan has any kind of lock (footprints, sign-in, friends, etc) you can’t be followed by bloglovin’; secondly, some blogs (so far, the only ones I’ve found are on the NY Times website) have an anti-floating bar thingy to makes it disappear, which is annoying. Otherwise, you can put all your blog subscriptions into one place.

  Of course, it doesn’t replace xanga. It doesn’t stop you from commenting, posting, and interacting in exactly the way you’re doing now. It just replaces or supplements your subscription page, and helps remove some of the hassle. Want me to make sure I’ll never miss your post, without having to worry about time-stamping? Make sure there are no locks, and I’ll follow it on bloglovin’. Problem solved.

  • 8:08 am
  • 21 Comments