I’ve finally made the switch to Unread for iOS for all of my RSS needs, but doing so required a massive reform of how I use RSS everyday.

So far, Unread has forced me to use RSS less, for better or worse.

Previously, I hopped around between Reeder and Mr. Reader on iOS, while my Mac RSS usage fell to Reeder and Readkit. All apps are fantastic, enjoying plusses and minuses that kept me from ever sticking to one forever.

Then, Macstories tipped me off to this new app made by Jared Sinclair, the same mind behind Riposte, my favorite client for App.net.

In a blog post, Jared summed up why he sent Unread into a crowded market of RSS readers:

Let Unread be an opportunity to break away from your old reading habits. Let Twitter or App.net be the place for loud, busy feeds. Let RSS be the place where great independent writing thrives. Choose your favorite writers and read them closely.

I did not heed this advice. I instead bought the app and loaded up my Feed Wrangler account without reform. I liked Unread very much at first, but it felt heavy and slow, so I ultimately found my way back to Reeder.

I must have signed up for Google Reader around 8 years ago; as I grew more and more interested in the mountain of tech blogs and automotive websites. Here was a way to bring it all together into one window on any computer, which is much better clicking through my bookmarks toolbar over and over again.

As years passed, I accrued dozens of RSS subscriptions which leads to a problem: I never had less than “+1000” unread articles. Never. That number could have easily been 20,000. I’ll never know.

RSS ultimately became a way to tap and swipe through headlines. I would only read content from writers I was truly interested in, yet I was too scared to unsubscribed from RSS feeds out of some strange fear of “missing out”. Jared’s aforementioned blog post sums it up well:

Most RSS apps are patterned after email. Noisy parades of dots, dates, and tags trample over their screens. Their source lists look like overflowing inboxes instead of stately tables of contents. Toolbars bristling with options obscure the text. Putting it bluntly, using these apps feels like work.

I tried to get away from RSS several years ago, using only on Twitter lists to keep up with news. That didn’t work, because I really did miss out on the work of some of my favorite writers.

Then, two things happened: Jared spoke at length about this philosophy of Unread on CMD+Space, and the World Cup started.

When the World Cup began, I started looking for ways to keep up with conversations over the tournament. For this, there’s no better place than Twitter to keep up, thus reminding me of all the Twitter lists I built years ago.

Another purpose for this: I hate spoilers. My job doesn’t allow me to watch all the soccer games that I want to see, especially during the winter. Instead of following my favorite soccer feeds on Twitter, I can simply hide them in a list for later viewing.

Thanks to Unread and Jared’s explanation of its purpose, I’ve found room for both RSS feeds and Twitter lists. All of my favorite websites and feeds are all dumped into Twitter. My favorite people get a follow, while important websites go into different lists titled “News,” “Tech,” “Blogs,” “Auto,” and “Football.”

As for RSS, I only subscribe to those who write what I want to read. The only writing I’ll see in Unread is from writers whose work I’m anxiously waiting to read.

That’s where my RSS situation stands for now. There’s no way to know if I’ll stick with it, but either way, the RSS reform has been incredibly refreshing.