What is the payoff feed readers?

[skysidhe]

Except the obvious?

When gathering information I suppose it makes sense but when posting information one does not automatically know another can subscribe to your feed. I didn't anyway.

If I want to visit a site I like to visit the whole site to get the whole interactive experience. I don't know why one person would want to subscribe to someones post feed unless they were a moderator.

So what are the benefits of subscribing to webpages rather than actually logging in or viewing a url directly?

I have become acutely aware of the little orange icon in my address box these days.