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?
Recent Entries
- FriendFeed no longer so friendly?
- A social media blackout?
- Midnight clubbing
- Huge story that (somewhat) slipped under radar?
- A Posterous post
- Shake it up
- The end of Internet censorship?
- First came the microstartups, then came the micro VCs
- #CNNFail, Iran, Twitter, and Sunday morning
- China and the webs
April 9th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
It’s a somewhat indirect reply to your question, but I remember one of your recent tweets. You commented on how many good links you gather from just a few pages of updates. So true.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Raoul, I do think that gets to the heart of it i.e. is Twitter a more “efficient” (though that’s a somewhat clinical word in this case) way to get “quality” links? I’m starting to think it can be.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I think it is definitely competing with my RSS reader for my time and I find myself clicking on Twitter links much more often too. I just blogged about how I think RSS and Twitter may be inversely related because there’s only so much time and attention one can spend on all this information! (Louis disagrees of course!)
April 10th, 2008 at 12:00 am
I’ve had similar notions. Twitter for me is one of the reasons I developed Gridjit (http://gridjit.com), a small application that simply made it easier for me to find news sources and follow interesting people.
There’s just so much information out there – the Twitter community, so far, is a high quality group of people that do a great job of filtering and sharing with everyone else.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Daryl, I’ve been thinking about what you wrote throughout the day and really like the idea of that inverse relationship.
Probably in the end the ideal balance sits between RSS, aggregators like techmeme, and communications platforms like twitter. We’re lucky we have so many choices, getting it sorted is the challenge and the fun!
April 10th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Ray, Gridjit is very cool, Twitter goes personalized home page! Great name too. Slap some ajax on that baby and you can go after Netvibes
I agree about the high quality of the people on Twitter — that’s a huge reason that it’s a useful place to hang out, particularly if you find / follow those people who will provide you with the most value. Wonder if anyone’s done an “essential people you should follow on twitter” list?
April 10th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Glad you like Gridjit.
I like the idea of “essential people to follow.” Sounds like a great post. Sounds like a great view to put into Gridjit.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Ah, another lure to write about Twitter yet again!
April 10th, 2008 at 3:03 am
I think you’re spot on about the balance, Eric. I think some of us like Louis are able to handle information easily, but most like me will reach a stage where something is going to have to give. Or a nice centralising app comes along. Looking forward to the next post!
April 10th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Thanks so much Daryl!
Finally took a break from Twitter and wrote about Ustream and Qik today, hope you can check it out. And speaking of time, I’ve gotta get running!
April 12th, 2008 at 6:01 am
[...] I follow many of the bloggers I like, and there’s always good content being highlighted. Online Media Cultist was thinking along the same lines [...]
April 12th, 2008 at 11:54 am
[...] Is Twitter the new RSS reader? [...]
April 12th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
As I read Twitter more – I read other things less. This means less RSS feeds, less blogs, etc.
As I comment via Twitter – I comment elsewhere less.
If it is good at distributing content (as Twitter is), then it will push something else out.
April 12th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
[...] Berlin has an interesting post asking whether Twitter is the new RSS reader. The post provides some great insight as to why Twitter could beat RSS readers, but in reality, it [...]
April 12th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
I have found the same, and even recently blogged it myself. I gave up on my news reader a few months ago, and now track most of my news through twitter or techmeme. I reckon I am saving myself a bit of time
.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:52 am
I wouldn’t say it’s the new RSS, but what I have noticed is that it’s becoming an Internet Relay Chat system, such like mIRC which was a great deal popular several years ago. Now, of late, I notice that people are having full on conversations via Twitter (twhirl, etc) and it’s as though we’re going in a complete circle.
It’s interesting to wonder about where this is going
April 14th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Chris M. If you visit #twitter on Freenode, you’ll find a bunch of people in there who use it occasionally as an adjunct to Twitter itself.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Valiable, I’m in agreement with you. I think as Twitter becomes more useful and more efficient, it will naturally lead to using and interacting with other services less. I see this as a good thing though (provided that you pull value out of it), don’t you?
April 14th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Richard, totally agreed! I find that I’m using RSS feeds more for those sessions where I have time and can really “dig in” and dig through the huge volume of publications.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Great point, Chris, at its core Twitter is a very simple platform which, somewhat ironically, makes it incredibly flexible and powerful.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
[...] Is Twitter the new RSS reader? – Online Media Cultist “For me, Twitter has of late become a faster and easier and more accessible way to let the news ‘come to me’.” (tags: internet news aggregators rss microblogging twitter) [...]