Comments on: Has the RSS Reader Been Replaced?

By: Seabrooke

Seabrooke — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:03:50 +0000

I’m definitely an RSS feed-reader user, for all of the reasons stated above. I use Bloglines, mostly because at the time I was first setting up a reader I was having trouble getting Google Reader to work for me for some reason. It saves me a lot of time, especially once my blogroll started reaching lengths where it was difficult to visit everyone. Even using the reader, I still don’t get to visit and read all the blogs on my list, but at least I can see which ones I haven’t been to in a while, and I’m alerted when my favourite ones add a post.

There’s no way I can keep up with all the twittering going on among my contacts, particularly with prolific users who post a dozen tweets in a day. Mostly I use Twitter for my own tweets and read whatever the latest posts are when I log in to do that.

By: QuantumTiger

QuantumTiger — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:11:45 +0000

Cyberthrush: I find Tweetdeck much friendlier than the Twitter website. I wouldn’t be without it. Downsides? It makes it easier to lose a couple of hours to twitter.

By: Heather

Heather — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:26:28 +0000

I can’t comment on the usefulness of Twitter in this regard, because I don’t use Twitter (I feel like an old fart or something when I admit that I don’t Tweet and that I don’t belong to Facebook! What is wrong with me?) I started using Bloglines as my RSS reader when I gave up on GoogleReader months ago because I don’t like how it’s laid out, and it’s worked out perfectly for me. Like Jason, I’ll “click through” on the posts that I want to comment on (like here!) I certainly hope that the RSS reader will be around for a while.

By: cyberthrush

cyberthrush — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:41:32 +0000

another ditto here for the prevailing view that RSS is fine for following and Twitter for discovery, but they’re not comparable. I was one of those who didn’t “get” Twitter for a long time, but am now addicted and use it as the source for 80% of the posts on one of my blogs. I’d probably find it even more useful if I used “Tweetdeck” but I’ve been a nervous-nellie about downloading that application — of those of you who use Tweetdeck does anyone have anything bad to say about it, or regret using it, or everyone happy with it (not to change the subject)?

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:51:59 +0000

Google Reader rules. I usually have it open in a tab to check on tech sites and some other feeds, but for the bulk of my blog reading — including nature blogs - I use the GR “Next” Firefox bookmark, which takes me directly from blog to blog in order of most recently published post, and marks them as read in Google Reader as I visit them — kind of like a StumbleUpon experience, except it’s only blogs I subscribe to. This gets around both the boring sameness of the GR interface, and also those bloggers who, for perverse reasons of their own, only offer partial feeds. And it makes it much easier to add comments. Needless to say, I’m not a fan of Twitter for following blogs, and tend not to follow people who primarily use Twitter to pimp their stuff elsewhere.

By: Susannah

Susannah — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:40:54 +0000

I remember to check Twitter once or twice a day, Facebook every couple of days. But my Google Reader page is always up, and I start there every time I come back to the computer. For blogs I will read every post (like this one), Twitter and Facebook are fine; all I need is a notification that there’s a new post. For the rest, Google Reader gives me enough material to make a choice whether I want to read the entire post or not, which ends up being a net saving of time.

By: John

John — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:43:21 +0000

RSS is one of several Web 2.0 technologies I have seen declared dead in recent weeks. I think some tech bloggers like to do this to look edgy, with the hope that no one will remember 6 months later if they’re wrong. So I take all of them with a grain of salt. As far as I can tell there must still be strong demand for good feed readers; both Google Reader and FeedDemon are still in active development.

Twitter may become an RSS-substitute for some users that aren’t comfortable with RSS readers. The trouble with Twitter as an RSS replacement is that conversations move so quickly that blog post alerts published at one time of day are likely to be missed by anyone logging in slightly later. It’s not a good replacement for users that want to follow specific blogs.

By: Ian Coleman

Ian Coleman — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:37:21 +0000

Jason, as a bloggers getting an increasingly significant proportion of trafic via twitter I’d say the majority of it is targeted, useful traffic. I choose who I follow and I choose who I retweet, as it seems do many people - and that naturally pushes my follower growth to favour people who share a similar set of interests. What I see developing on twitter is loosely-formed communities of shared interest which extend my reach independantly from the tyranny of Google. It has led me to people I would otherwise not have met.

Can we as bloggers afford to ignore it? Okay, so maybe that was an overstatement! Each individual has to the best way to achieve their goals within their time budget and comfort zones. Will it be there in a year’s time? Who can say! But for right now, I’d say I’ve acheived more targetted hits and interesting new contacts in the last four months on Twitter than I did in the prior two years.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:36:38 +0000

I agree 100% with wren. Twitter is good for discovery, RSS is good for following.

By: jason

jason — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:12:09 +0000

One of the interesting pieces of this is that we’re discussing RSS and Twitter in two very different contexts, two fundamental dichotomies if you will: RSS as a push technology of content and Twitter as a networking tool to advance said content.

Ian makes a good point that Twitter enables bulk republishing much as Facebook does, except it does it in shorter bits to satiate the decreasing attention spans of the “now generation.” But I disagree that it can’t be ignored: I ignore it just fine and live a perfectly happy life without all the miniature dramas it creates. I ignored MySpace and Facebook even when told I absolutely had to be there (I have accounts but rarely check them). Can’t say I missed anything by not attending those parties. And like other internet fads before it (MySpace and Geocities anyone?), I suspect Twitter will likewise be replaced by something shinier and newer…sooner or later.

Yet as a content syndication and delivery technology, Twitter is useless. It can tell me there’s new content, but it can’t show me the whole of that content in a stored way that I can come back to later. That’s where RSS feeds come in: my RSS reader stays on all the time. Even if I’m away for a week, I can come back and see precisely what I’ve missed. I don’t have to read it all–just like I don’t have to read all my e-mail–but at least the whole of it is there for me to pick and choose from.

And here’s the interesting piece of this: A lot of Twitter-using bloggers say they get the majority of their hits from other Twitter users. I’m curious: Do those hits translate to just a lot of empty web traffic or to like-minded people staying, commenting, and following your work consistently? Or is it all flash-in-the-pan traffic because they’re clicking Twitter links in search of the next quick fix? I’ll take low meaningful traffic over high empty traffic any day.