FeedDemon 1.6: Attention Report

Earlier this month I introduced FeedDemon 1.6's new Feed Reports feature, which includes a top ten list of the feeds you visit the most. As much as I like the simplicity of this "most visited" report, the fact that it only reports which feeds you're clicking the most left me unconvinced that it paints an accurate picture of which feeds you're really paying attention to.

For example, if you flag a dozen items in one feed, you're probably paying more attention to that feed than you are to a feed that has no flagged items. And if you copy a dozen items in a feed to a FeedDemon news bin, that probably means you're paying a lot of attention to that feed.

So, I decided to create a new report which shows the feeds you're paying the most attention to based on more than simply clicks. The end result is the report shown below, which will be included in FeedDemon 1.6 RC2 later this week:

The tricky part, of course, was determining how to calculate "attention." Right now I'm using this formula:

Attention = feed clicks + item clicks + podcast clicks + (items ever flagged × 2) + (items added to news bins × 2) + (items added to watches ÷ 2)

In my case this formula works well - the report does show which feeds I pay the most attention to - but I'll be curious to find out whether it fits workflows that are different from my own.

Related to this, another nice addition in the upcoming FeedDemon 1.6 RC2 is the ability to export the current feed report as an OPML document. This enables you to share the list of feeds you read the most in a format that can be imported by pretty much every aggregator, and it also <foreshadowing>opens the door to some interesting new features down the road</foreshadowing>.

Comments

[mbg]

I like that formula, because it means you don't have to use news bins or watches if you don't want to (I don't), and you can still make use the "Feed Reports" feature :)

Better than forcing you to use parts of the software that you don't want to, which I can see some other developers or companies doing...

[Andrew Herron]

Interesting... I can see how it will lead to funky stuff in the future. My usage habits:

I don't use flags, bins or watches and never, ever click a podcast (auto only).

With the increase in newspaper usefulness, I now only click an item when there are so many items it becomes too difficult to read them in the newspaper.

[Dayhawk Kim]

I like that there is more weight placed on flagged items. Why is there less weight placed on items picked up by Watches? Thanks. - Dayhawk

[Andrew Herron]

Interesting... I can see how it will lead to funky stuff in the future. My usage habits:

I don't use flags, bins or watches and never, ever click a podcast (auto only).

With the increase in newspaper usefulness, I now only click an item when there are so many items it becomes too difficult to read them in the newspaper.

[Bill Wood]

Nice feature, but can I sort the list of feeds using this algorithm too?

[Nick Bradbury]

Dayhawk, I give more weight to items added to news bins since that's a deliberate (ie: user-initiated) action, whereas watches automatically collect items for you.

[Nick Bradbury]

Bill, there isn't a way to sort by attention rank, but we've had a number of similar requests for sorting the list of feeds, so there's a very good chance you'll see this in the future.

[Allen]

I always use the 'open in another window' when perusing the newspaper. This doesn't generate any 'activity' as far as I can tell.

[Alex Barnett]

nice postI like the ' 'bit.

[Jessica]

Really liked your post I have alwasy used feed demon and cant wait to start utilizing it better.