Types of Blogs

Gabe Weatherhead:

I have a couple of little projects that have me thinking a lot about blogging. One of those projects is to groom and optimize my RSS feed reading. Crazy, right? I don’t like reading most mainstream news and I definitely don’t like Apple News. RSS is a good way to see new information that is generally relevant to what I want to think about.

As I groomed my RSS list, I’ve been thinking about the value of each site and the type of content they post. Within my collection I’ve identified four overlapping themes that help me evaluate if I want more of that content.

Gabe’s categories line up pretty well with my RSS reading experience over the years. Of course, some sites fall into more than one category, sometimes all four! Those tend not to stay in my feed list for long, unless I find a way to filter out just the stuff I’m interested in.

Like Gabe, I find myself gravitating towards those blogs that are Explainers with a distinctive Voice. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of Explainers that are also Hustlers, which makes it hard to take their advice seriously. And a Voice can change over time and start to grate on my nerves.