The d3ft links
As part of the constant evolution of d3ft.com, I’ve added a new section dedicated to the links I was adding to the site. As a fastidious linker, I always feel the need to link to things. The problem with linking to other places from this place is that relatively few people get to see those links. The vast majority of people who visit this site are coming for some of the anchor posts I’ve written, and not people I’m sending them elsewhere.
What I decided to do was to spend more time linking to items where people are already looking; in Google Reader. The combination of sharing links with other people, and the ability to repurpose those links elsewhere reminds me of what was (and is) possible with del.icio.us (oops, I meant, Delicious). That lead me to put together a page that uses my links, but isn’t the goal page.
The d3ft links uses the shared items part of Google Reader, put on my site through a WordPress plugin. Yay for site integration (and all those swell page–views), but that isn’t the point. RSS is the goal, and those RSS subscriptions are very important to me. To be clear, I am not begging for subscriptions—they are simply another indicator of success.
If there is anything I love more than linking to things, it is statistics. Google Reader gives me that. It also allows me to share the stuff I share more easily. Then, after all that, I get the fun and excitement of charts and other analytical datum. That is why I moved there, to do this.
This is a screen capture from earlier today. Reader gives me that lovely meta knowledge of what I am doing. And with Helvetireader, I don’t drown in the interface, and it looks so good that I stopped using Fever for most things. I still use it as a meme–tracker, but not as the place for my main consumption of RSS.
I have the feeling that image will appear dated after a while. Not that the volume of reading will go up (it most certainly will), but that the number of subscriptions is so low. In the past, I maintained over 300 subscriptions with NetNewsWire. That level of information overload is just unnecessary with all the trend–trackers and all the other people tracking the trend–trackers. The time to become a leader in linking was 2003—there are enough linkers out there now.