RSS Can’t Fill Google Reader Void

@MichaelSurtees is the product designer at Dataminr in New York City. He has been blogging since 2005.

When it comes to discovering and consuming content online, I divide people into two groups: those who go to popular websites to get their content, and the people who use Google Reader.

The difference is that people using Google Reader tend to be much more active when trying to find things as fast and efficiently as possible.

For me, I’ve organized a lot of sources within a number of folders in the same manner that I organize Twitter lists. I have tiered folders into which the sources go. Over time, if the source is good, it jumps into a more active folder. If the content slows, I move the source down.

The biggest difference for my reading habits is that Twitter is always on, but I visit Google Reader only a few times a day. Now that Google is killing its Reader, I’m forced to rethink my reading habits.

The popular theory seems to be that people will move on to another RSS reader, and life will go on as usual. I’m not that optimistic. RSS is not going to evolve, and I doubt it will get better. It’s basically dead now that Google has decided to stop supporting its Reader.

I have a couple of apps that feed me content and will pick up the slack, but they won’t show me stuff that is unique. Those apps basically show me what everyone else is already seeing.

Before Google Reader, I saved all the sites I wanted to read daily by bookmarking them in categorized folders. The drawing below is my basic process flow for finding content online in 2008. M1 through M5 are the folders that contain the number of bookmarks. M1 is opened the most and each subsequent folder is opened less.

The biggest issue with this method was that it slowed down my Internet connection when I opened more than 20 at a time. Part of me wants to go back to that old system, but I also wonder if there’s a better way.

What system would make it possible to gather a site’s content in an organized way with just one click? Potentially any of the read-it-later sites like Pocket, Readability and Instapaper could evolve to make it easy to create custom lists of content. They all have great integration for desktop, mobile and tablets. The problem is that if we stop using RSS, how would those services get the feeds?

I’m looking for an option that doesn’t rely on RSS but can still tell me when a site has been updated. The ideal service would then let me organize those sites into specific lists. Twitter is not the entire answer, but I do think there’s a great element to tapping into a system that is somewhat human.

What if a person could have an organized list of sites they follow? When someone shares a link or mentions a post, the system makes a note of it. I could then discover which sites are active, the posts people mention and recently updated sources.

Maybe the system doesn’t show me the entire post, but at least it gives me a signal that something is going on with the site — and that signal comes from a human.

The biggest issue Google Reader solved was the inefficiency of visiting hundreds of sites. A system that points to my favorite sites would be a logical next step that could fill the void Google has left.

Mashable composite, images via iStockphoto, duncan1890 and courtesy of Google