For me, it's definitely Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Songza, Tumblr, Youtube, Klout and some more I'm sure I'm forgetting ;)

Ah, and maybe compulsively is a strong word - just which sites do you like to visit :)

BoingBoing, HuffingtonPost, TechDirt, i09, Penny Arcade, The Verge, Daring Fireball... heck I don't even think of FB, Twitter et al as sites. They're just part of the ether.

And those ARE compulsive, FTR.

Google Reader!!!, Facebook, CNN.com, and YouTube are my go-to sites. Most of my browsing goes through Reader, I've spent the last 5 or 6 years categorizing and adding sites to it so it's really become my go-to news source. On the iPad I use it through FlipBoard and on the Mac I have that great Reeder app.

CNN.com has been a habit of mine since 1995 when it launched. Before that there really wasn't any free news source that easily accessible. At least as far as I could find.

Lon- do you find yourself consistently reading articles from certain sites/writers while using Reader, or do you go solely by headlines and keywords?

I have everything sorted by category so I tend to look more for the headlines and keywords more than I do the individual author. Once I link out I tend to poke around a little bit in the site.

In the case of articles on the same topic, I tend to choose my favorite sites first.

Definitely facebook, twitter, and pinterest, with a dash of Weddingbee (ever since I've been a blogger!), and a stop or ten on Greenroomblog to do editor-y stuff. Plus, all of the actor sites: Playbill, AEA, Actors Access...that's definitely compulsive at this point :)

Google Reader (subscribed to Develop, Gamasutra News, GamePolitics, GamesIndustry.biz, Lifehacker, Mashable, SPOnG, The Verge, TorrentFreak, and VentureBeat), then Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Quora, Pinterest and Google Finance. Obsessively!

twitter, facebook, klout, flickr, youtube, blogger, linkedin, spotify, (instagram).... probably more.

facebook, twitter, instagram, g+, slickdeals.net - those are all multi-daily for me.

Christian, holy crap, yeah! I forgot Slickdeals and Woot. Been really getting into home.woot.com and tech.woot.com lately for nifty things to have around the house or in my laptop bag.

Actually Jon & Christian - there's totally thinkgeek (which I think you both might visit) as well :D

I try not to because if I did, I would never have any money for anything. Ever.

"Should I eat tonight, OR BUY A SHIRT I CAN PLAY DRUMS ON?!"

I think you mean... this? thinkgeek.com
which is a little less girl-friendly

On the contrary, I think it's VERY friendly toward girls.

Like Jon, I don't go to thinkgeek.com very often. I love their site, but I'd be entirely broke.

Side note, I HIGHLY recommend the Annoy-a-tron 2.0: thinkgeek.com Works wonderfully.

I'm terrified, Piz.

I've added a few more people who requested to be on this thread - chime in with your favs!

Christian, have you seen the EvilTron?

thinkgeek.com

It's easily hideable and plays six horrible sounds at random intervals and volume:

Something unsettling creaking
Unidentifiable scratching sounds
Gasping last breath
Sinister child laughing
Eerie whispering of 'hey, can you hear me?'
Random Mode

EVIL EVIL EVIL. Apologies for the thread derail. Actually, I forgot to mention my biggest daily obsession: reddit. Anyone else?

loves an amazing site with daily feeds & an incredible archive openculture.com

two music sites.
one is concertzender.nl, with crystal-clear streaming along simultaneous channels ... from the Netherlands ...

the other is called Q2 wqxr.org and is internet-only streaming site for new contemporary music (classical and post-classical), ... especially Nadia Sirota & Conner Hannock weekday mornings ... + 100s of archived programs ( live concerts )

& now of course ... branch

thanks, Goldie Chan !

New rule on this thread - if I added ya but you don't respond with your fav sites/meaningfully comment, I'll remove you in a couple of days to make room for some of the other people requesting to get on. Thanks :D

Thanks for the add, Goldie :) definitely facebook, twitter, pinterest, 9gag, google, wikipedia, my gmail and now branch!

Isabel - haha, I think it's interesting how I don't even think of adding Google (or it's competitor, Bing) or Gmail because they're even MORE compulsive than my regular sets of sites. Glad ya brought them in!

It may be because I'm lazy, but outside of being a regular reader of the Economist, almost all of my online reading comes from social recommendations. Mostly from Hacker News and Twitter.

I rarely bookmark or subscribe to sites or go back to read their latest posts without seeing a link posted somewhere. I do often save the articles I've liked (usually by favoriting them) and generally like to re-share the best of them.

For me if I think when I wake up I use :
1°) Twitter
2°) Path
3°) Instagram
4°) Gmail
5°) Facebook
6°) AppStore
7°) L'Equipe.fr (Sport news in France)
8°) Yahoo News

I check Engadget, Joystiq, TUAW, speed.cd, Waffle.cd, and appshopper pretty religiously. I check all my blogs in an RSS reader.

I also do check my Google Reader, but I use a separate Twitter account kinda as an RSS feed, following news, deals, and tech accounts.

I follow all the blogs I like on Twitter as well. But, I use a dedicated client on my computer, Reeder, for when I am at home and Google Reader for when I am at work. Facebook is slowly becoming obnoxious for me to check. I have nearly "un-friended" everyone that I once liked seeing posts from. It seems to have lost it's novelty to me. I don't care to hear about everyone's depressing life anymore.

Wow, so I'm hearing Reeder (Chase) and Google Reader (Piz) for aggregating feeds (personally I see a lot of news off of Twitter similar to Chris) and sometimes I just save articles onto Flipboard for later. Any other news aggregators?

I visit the community group Olfactory Art every day, olfactoryart.net, a website for people who make art with scents like I do. Another website I really love is designboom.com, you get a lot of great information about new stuff. I subscribed on their daily newsletter and see it as a relaxing time and still gets a lot of info. Besides these two websites I try every day to be on FB, linkedIn, and recently Pinterest. Twitter I indend to use more, but don't want to tweet personal stuff, love more interesting stuff concerning smell and art. Hope that someone has a look at olfactory art, their are some works of me, and besides this community website for olfactory art lovers, I update my personal website every week peterdecupere.net

Facebook, Klout, Hootsuite, and Twitter!

Awesome to meet another Klout fan! Mmm - there's a nifty Quora post (my sometimes addiction) where I got asked about the new algorithm... quora.com
Also love Sprout, but understand that it's not free, so fewer people use it :)

Goldie, I Heart the new Klout algo change. (75)

I've been increasingly drawn to Prismatic (getprismatic.com). There's something about personalized news that I've alway strived to use. Prismatic seems to be striking a good balance between clean/personalized and rich/broad. It has become my main source of news and I check it multiple times per day.

It may partly be a function of the news that interests me seeing as how the other site (not counting Twitter) I frequent the most is Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com or the better UI hckrnews.com).

I'm loving thetechblock.com, theverge.com, and daringfireball.net for my daily tech musing.

I'd also add thefancy.com as well as uncrate.com

Ones I never miss are the time saving aggregators

Hootsuite
Google Reader
Google News

plus a few non-aggregated sites that I find addictive:

Pinterest
Quora
Branch

But when there is more time I visit things like Longform.org, New Yorker and The Atlantic looking for longer reads.

Twitter, Gmail, Flipboard, Zite, netvibes, SMoney,

1. Reddit
2. Twitter
3. GMail
4. Yahoo News
5. ESPN
6. Wordpress
7. Google Reader

I'm really enjoying following this thread. There are several sites i plan on looking into. I've never really given Flipboard a fair shot. I think I might have to revisit that.

Abdo - I checked out thefancy.com but never got 110% into it, I hear the audience primarily skews male.
Ken - Reddit is a lot of reading material already (sans Flipboard) :)

I think thefancy.com is almost like the male version of Pinterest, which I've been told is primarily female.

Yep. How interesting - always curious what about the UI/UX makes it "male" or "female"

to begin with: google reader. site of all sites:)

google reader, LinkedIn Today, foodgawker if I'm in the mood, wsj.com.

Interesting how so many of us love Google Reader. Been the same for a long time and still hard to beat!

Amazon.com recommendations. Not all reliable but still helpful. Criticker.com for new film discoveries...

Thanks to everyone who contributed to figuring out which websites we all compulsively visit daily! Closing down this branch - might open a new one in a year and see if preferences have changed :)