Is Twitter the new RSS reader?
I’ve been obsessing over Twitter the last few weeks, and I left off yesterday’s piece with the question: has Twitter become the new RSS reader?
For me, Twitter has of late become a faster and easier and more accessible way to let the news “come to me.” Churning through endless RSS feeds – spools of new product announcements from the likes of TechCrunch and Mashable, for instance – can at times be a chore, leeching away the excitement of discovery that leads me (and you) to hit the interwebs in the first place seeking out new treasure chests in the first place.
As an experiment, I took note of some of the interesting stories that I found among the Twitter folk that I follow over a 12 hour or so period. Here it is:
* The $10 billion state bond for high-speed trains — good for Silicon Valley, good for California?
* Twitterholics Blog
* Wondering why I write less these days?
* Hell Hath Frozen Over
* 10 Signs that You’re Addicted to Twitter
* The Truth According to Wikipedia
* I’m evolving, constantly evolving.
* Iraq In Charts
* 5 Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter
This is a list of stories that I would not have found in my RSS reader, at least not in full. I enjoyed reading the stories on this list, perhaps partly because it had that sense of discovery about it. People on Twitter chose to share these stories with me and many others, and in that way I suppose it felt good to be part of that ongoing conversation.
Not surprisingly, several of the stories are Twitter-centric. That might be due to the fact that as I mentioned I’m in a Twitter-obsessed phase and obviously related to the fact that people on Twitter like nothing better than talking about Twitter!
What do y’all Twitter-obsessed masses think? How has your use of Twitter related to your time spent digging through your RSS reader?
