Attention Lenses - a third category of Reading List?

Amy Bellinger, Adam Green and Anne Zelenka are debating the optimal size of Reading Lists, or if indeed there even is one. I tend to agree with the view that regular Reading Lists - slowy changing lists of blog feeds - should remain small, because of the fact we're already inundated with feeds. But I also see uses for larger lists and have been calling them Grazing Lists because I don't think we'll actually want to aggregate them, as with today's feed readers, but rather graze them with the Feed Grazers that are on the way.

And Anne points to another use for larger lists - as Attention Lenses for memetrackers like Memeorandum. She doesn't call them Attention Lenses but that's what Kevin Burton was calling them in his podcasts with Alex Barnett and Nick Bradbury. Kevin was referring more to the use of one's own OPML files as lenses but Anne gives examples where it makes sense to use shared Reading Lists for the same purpose. As Amy says -

"Maybe there does need to be a couple different kinds of lists -- big ones to discover stuff for special information missions, and the smaller, more manageable lists to add to your daily diet of feeds. Hey, this is just getting started, right? We're all just making it up as we go along."

Exactly :)

Technorati Tags: Reading Lists, OPML, Attention Lenses

Comments

[Anne Zelenka]

I listened to one of the podcasts with Kevin Burton (was there more than one?) but didn't catch the "attention lens" term. I like that. Like you said, what I'm talking about is slightly different because an attention lens seems to be from the perspective of one person's attention. My conception is more a topic lens, and not a very effective one if you've looked at the Megite parenting page lately (lots of feminism and news, not so much parenting). The current infrastructure doesn't yet do what I'm thinking, but I'm hopeful it won't be too long before we get there. Very exciting.