Josh Bancroft’s TinyScreenfuls.com

Several people have asked me recently “what are your top 5 blog recommendations?” I’ve given pretty much the same answer, so I thought I’d post it here, so I can refer people to the list in the future, and in case anyone else is interested.

I tend to make a distinction between “blog” and “news-site-with-a-feed”. To me, blogs are about humans. Relationships. Stories. Reading what smart people have to say. That’s not to say that I don’t read a ton of feeds from sites like Digg and Techmeme. I group “Blogs by People” and “Group/Topical Blogs” separately in my aggregator. Maybe I’ll make that a separate “Top 5 Must Read News/Topical Feeds” list.

Anyway, here are the 5 bloggers that I recommend you read:

• Robert Scoble ( feed URL) - Late of Microsoft, now cooking up cool stuff for Podtech.net. The preeminent corporate geek blogger (OK, I admit that he’s my idol - I want to do for Intel what he’s done for Microsoft).
• Dave Winer ( feed URL) - The original blogger and father of RSS. Sometimes cranky, always insightful.
• Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion ( feed URL) - Steve is a PR guy that dove into the world of blogging. He “gets it”, and is always posting new and useful stuff.
• Seth Godin ( feed URL) - Author of several fascinating books, including “All Marketers Are Liars”. Seth always makes me think about things in a new way, and helps me focus on what’s important.
• Kathy Sierra’s “Creating Passionate Users” ( feed URL) - Every post is insightful, and illustrates ways to help people have that “I kick ass!” feeling (as she describes it :-)). The antidote to doing things by corporate committee.

I’ve left off quite a few - I do subscribe to over 1000 feeds, after all. These are just the feeds where I’d say, if you’re only going to read 5 feeds, make it these 5. Of course there are tons more that are very interesting and worthwhile.

If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d whip up an OPML file of these feeds, so you could just import them into your aggregator. I’ll see if I can get something like that up soon, because I figure, the more people I help get started reading feeds, and reading these 5 people in particular, the more impact I’m going to have in teaching people why and how the “new web” is so important now, and is going to be even more important, no matter if you’re a stay at home mom, or a corporate executive.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know what your top 5 blogs are in the comments!