Still, I think we're talking about the early adopters. I think the only way to make feeds mainstream is to use a mainstream delivery mechanism (like Facebook) and leave out some of the flexibility, which adds to the “geekiness” that Corvida and other have mentioned.

Or go with a combined approach like a Boxee that delivers all kinds of content, including feeds. Feed readers have to evolve to reach the mainstream.

To make feed reading mainstream, i think people are going better tools for managing there incoming feeds, not just subscribing to every article a particular blogger writes. I think in the future people going to become aware of feeds, through the widgets presenting feeds, on someone elses website. People tend to like browsing content more than having it pushed toward them, which goes some way to explain the lack of take up of feeds. I think feeds will be successful soon, I'm betting my future upon it, right now.

As I said on FF, there isn't an order in my head. I just dumped them as they came to me, probably shouldn't have numbered them.

You are correct about the geek factor. Lots of people I talk to about RSS glaze over as I try to explain it. The lack of a proxy-capable web reader hinders adoption in the enterprise too.

There will be someone who makes a lot of money figuring out how to make feed reading mainstream. It might take a couple years, but as people come to FB and other apps online, the need for aggregation will grow.

Maybe FB will become a reader. All your feeds . . .

Of course, remembering to check them would be priority #2.

I have the exact same problem with unread items. Seems like undone work, making me itch to click mark all as read. Totally psychological.

Social added to just about anything seems to work well. Glad you like the Reader munge widget. I find all kinds of new stuff in the shared items of people I know; it's like having a social filter on the 'tubes. Most of the smart feed readers I've used are decent; Google Reader has suggestions now. Decent, but still a long way to go.

For me, the problem seems to be more on controlling and managing the numerous feeds: there are hundreds of unread entries at any given moment waiting to be skimmed through and often I just skip the whole thing and mark all as read. This is especially the problem with aggregate feeds such as Digg and OraNA; with such a wide spectrum of content (and often little or no editorial control), the headlines vary in quality and make following the feed difficult.

Feeds + Social, now there's something! I like your “What We're Reading” sidebar app / feed. I would also imagine a “learning” feed that would rate feed items based on your previous reading habits, tag words and such and only show items above a certain treshold would render many a feed more meaningful.