I knew I was missing the greater conversation on the RE.net, and part of me felt bad about that, but I knew what a slippery slope it would become to get back into it. I relied on others telling me that there was an interesting post over at Sellsius or BHB or ActiveRain or wherever, and that’s about the only connection I had to the community’s writing. Curiously I would also poke around to see what others were up to, if I found myself with a free moment, but I continued to resist the need to subscribe and keep up.

Now things have changed again. I actually have way more time for RE.net participation because of the efficiency with which our company is running. Starting from scratch, I have begun to reconnect to the greater conversation. iGoogle is the bomb. It allows me to set up tabs for different groups like SEO, or RE.net or Tomato bloggers or AR friends etc and have pages of their feeds super organized. I’m not at the 100′s of feeds that I used to be, but I no can comfortably manage the 40-50 that I feel bring the best noise.

Yes, you guys are on it too.

Great post Zebra.

I’m still reading comments, since they are sent to me from the posts I write. I also track comments through co.mments.com.

I’ve still read a few blog posts, but only those mentioned to me by people or found in the course of other searches. The RSS reader remains off. I’ve gone a few days before, but I figure things won’t really get interesting until a week or so has gone by.

About a quarter of my posts start as blog comments and just morph into posts as I blah on and on, so I do like tracking what is happening. I think part of blogging is a conversation, so commenting and continuing post ideas and themes is important. The one thing that worries me about a feed reader blackout is not commenting for a month.

Partial feeds irk me. I hate having to click through to read something. A blog has to be fantastic to survive in my feed reader as a partial feed.