Divya Manian

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Analysing my Information Consumption

I had tweeted about wanting to analyse my feed reading activity — mainly to track what different topics I followed over the years. Neither Google Reader trends nor NetNewsWire stats charted that kind of data. Luckily, the list of blogs I was subscribed to, in 2006 and in 2007, are still online (list for 2006, list for 2007 [.xml file]).

Here is what number crunching turns up:

  • My web design follow list hasn’t changed over the last 3.5 years. It is, more or less, the same.
  • In 2008, I discovered a topic outside my usual interests: Africa. This led to devouring books, music, news, twitter updates about various countries of Africa.
  • In 2009, I stopped tracking freelance jobs altogether (though I rarely ever read those feeds after 2006) as I started working full-time at Microgroove
  • In 2006, I was giving equal attention to graphic design / illustrations / decor. This changed in 2007, when I started devoting most of my attention to illustrations. This interest waned somewhat in 2008/09 where my attention was taken up by Africa.
  • In 06/07, I had a lot of interest in decor (which led to this). Recently, I have become more convinced of the benefits of leading a spartan life and lost interest in hoarding stuff (however nice!).
  • The number of feeds I read seems to be reducing steadily — though they keep fluctuating every month. The main cause of this reduction, I suspect, is the increased use of twitter. Since I follow some of these bloggers on twitter, I don’t feel the need to subscribe to their blog.

Here are the graphs for comparison:

2006

Divya Manian Feed Subscriptions by Topics in 2006

2007

Divya Manian Feed Subscriptions by Topics in 2007

2008-2009

Divya Manian Feed Subscriptions by Topics in 2008-09

Enough about my activities! I am very curious to know how your information consumption trend is like?

(Charts were generated using Google Chart Generator)

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