A few months ago I did some serious pruning on my Google Reader, which was choked by an overgrowth of blog feeds. I'd been trying to stay around 200-250, but somehow the number kept climbing toward 300. One day I decided I had officially hit Information Overload. I was either spending so much time reading that I had no time to write, or I was feeling guilty for clicking on "mark all as read."

Choices were difficult, but I managed to cut back to 50 RSS feeds. It meant I missed reading some people whose writing I really liked, but it became much more manageable and enjoyable.

Now I'm trying another tactic: cutting RSS feeds even further, yet increasing the number of blogs I read. Here's how I'm accomplishing that.

1. Twitter links. Many of the bloggers I regularly read are on Twitter, so I have unsubscribed from their feed. Whenever they tweet a link to their blog, I click to open it in a new tab. At some point during the day, I'll skim through the posts and close out the tabs. I try to comment on several blogs every day.

2. Instapaper. When I come across what looks like a good read but I don't have time for it at the moment, I click on Read Later in my browser toolbar. This handy bookmarklet creates a personalized newspaper with the links I've saved. When "later" rolls around, I can browse through the links and Skip, Edit or Delete them. By the way, Instapaper was developed for the iPhone, so it's a great mobile tool as well as Web app.

3. Social Media Today. Because social media is my primary business, many of the feeds previously in my reader were from people writing in the field. Most of those same bloggers, however, are published at Social Media Today. I pulled their Vortex widget into my home page for Netvibes, which has replaced my Google Reader. With one click I can check the latest posts from scores of bloggers.

4. Marketing Profs Daily Fix. Many of the top voices in marketing are featured here, so I have unsubscribed from their individual blogs in favor of reading them at the Daily Fix. Of course, when I read an article by one of my favorite marketing bloggers, I often click through to their blog to browse around and see what catches my eye.

5. Alltop.com is Guy Kawasaki's latest venture. I was flattered to be included both in the section for Social Media and the Twitterati, but I did not think I would have much use for the site myself. Recently, though, I've been using it to find new voices in areas outside my primary interest of social media. Want to find information on personal finance or small business, for example? Alltop.com is a good starting point.

So what's left in my feed reader? Mostly fun stuff, like I Can Has Cheezburger and Crazy Aunt Purl, "the true-life diary of a thirty-something, newly divorced, displaced Southern obsessive-compulsive knitter who has four cats. (Because nothing is sexier than a divorced woman with four cats.)" Laurie Perry's ramblings have turned into one of my all-time favorite blogs.

The item I check most frequently in my feed reader is what I call my "me-monitor." It's where I subscribe to feeds based on search results for my name and our blog name.

So far I am actually reading more posts, by more authors, and I have given up worrying whether I've missed something important. If it's truly important, I'll come across it some place besides my feed reader.

I'm still a candidate for social networking rehab, but at least I've broken my RSS addiction. How about you?