I used to integrate my RSS and email archives with NewsGator. I didn’t understand one of the core differences between email and RSS. When you delete an email it is gone forever. But when you delete an RSS item, you’ve only deleted your local copy.

Saving RSS items is not an effective information management strategy. When you save an item, your folder hierarchy is your metadata. But when you link to an item from your weblog, then your entire post is metadata.

When you save RSS to your hard drive, you’re on your own for search and retrieval. But when you save to your weblog, every other blogger is a potential colleague. If an item is truly significant, then you will have company in linking to it.

It was an epiphany when I realized that I didn’t need to archive RSS. Link analysis and internet search progress faster than local metadata and desktop search.