I used to be a big fan of RSS readers, and I even built one, of sorts, as a startup at one point in 2009. But these days, I tend to just use Instapaper. I have

I used to be a big fan of RSS readers, and I even built one, of sorts, as a startup at one point in 2009. But these days, I tend to just use Instapaper. I have the plugin installed in all my browsers, and if I'm looking for something to read, I swipe thru my saves using the Instapaper Chrome web interface, Android app, or (most commonly) iPad app. I have Instapaper and Readwise synced up, which adds a little extra incentive (highlights) for doing things that way. How do I find stuff to Instapaper? These days, it's TechMeme, Hacker News, Lobste.rs, Reddit, Twitter, Google News, Apple News (on iPad). Heavily weighted to the first four sources, with #1-#4 being maybe 80% of my saved links that come from aggregators. Recently I have been beta testing Readwise Reader. It's probably as good a reading experience as I could currently imagine (it's sort of Instapaper on steroids, and it even syncs with Instapaper). But, even still, I find the entire category a little tired. The big issue is source quality. It's harder to find a small group of regular bloggers that might make a curated RSS reader experience worthwhile. When I was younger, I'd read Joel Spolsky, Paul Graham, and dozens of developer blogs, and that was "enough". These days, to get the same sort of volume and quality, I'd need to curate hundreds (maybe thousands) of sources. It's also sad, but true, that the average blog on the internet is simply no longer publishing new posts. That is, the typical blog with an interesting archive is likely abandoned in terms of new posts going online, or has the publishing rate reduced to an annual trickle. So it's not worth my time to predict and curate the exceptions.