Ya Gotta Keep 'em Separated

Props to the folx over at The Iconfactory on the release of Tapestry, a unified feed reader that brings together open social platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky, with other sources like RSS and YouTube. The concept of a unified reader like this is interesting to me, but after trying Tapestry, I think I want my social feeds quarantined from my blog/website/RSS feeds.

Simply put: I read Mastodon for a completely different reason than I read RSS.

In Mastodon, I want to favorite, boost and reply to friends, learn what they’re up to and what they think about things. This is done in short order. I’m usually in and out quickly, never spending more than a few minutes cruising the feed. When I come upon an interesting link that requires more time and attention to read, I save it for later in my feed reader of choice Reeder.

Conversely, when I open Reeder, it’s usually for a session. I do this once in the morning and once at night. Blog posts and website articles by nature are longer than social posts, so reading RSS is a conscious decision when I have the capacity to dedicate to longer reading. Even thought Reeder has the ability to unite RSS with open social feeds, I do not utilize this feature.

For me, social feeds are for interaction, while RSS feeds are for deep thinking.

Again, kudos to Tapestry and Reeder for experimenting with feed unification. Perhaps as the feature set grows in each app I will consider migrating over, but for now I will keep my feeds separated.