I'm Gilbert Pellegrom.

Here is a question I have been asking myself for a while: is twitter replacing RSS? The only reason I am asking this is because over the last year (basically since I signed up for twitter) I have noticed a gradual shift in my reading patterns from RSS Feeds to twitter. Twitter has certainly had a huge impact the web development/design niche and, after recently hitting the mainstream, I find that even my mum knows what twitter is. It’s fast becoming a household name. So is it really changing the way we find out about interesting articles on the web? And is it killing RSS?

Things of the Past

I remember “back in the day” when I used to open up my web browser on my personalized homepage at netvibes and spend a good hour or so trolling through my 50ish RSS feeds that I had decided qualified my regular attention. Certainly this was, at the time, an amazingly powerful way to keep up with the fast paced web development/design world. I didn’t even have to visit any of the sites. I could just read the content of the posts in the Feed Reader and whenever I found a new RSS feed it was as simple as clicking “Add Feed” and paste the URL. However thing’s are not as they used to be. Here is quote that seems to reflect my own feelings:

howardowens: I just trimmed my RSS subs down from nearly 300 to 75. Just couldn’t keep up. And if it’s really worth reading, it will be in Twitter.

And that’s just it. Twitter has become the new measuring rod of internet content.

Living in the Future

So what do I do now? Well I just let twitter tell me when something interesting appears. Simple. I only follow people/sites who I find interesting or contribute in areas that interest me. This way I only come across posts that other people have justified as “shareable” and, if I agree it is an amazing post, then I’ll retweet. And whenever I find a new site that I want to follow the first thing I do is look for a “follow me” link. And if they don’t have a twitter account then I have to settle for RSS. I don’t know if any else has the same thoughts but twitter now takes priority as the information aggregator.

So RSS is Dead?

Now I’m not trying to claim by any means that RSS is dead, or even dying. All I’m saying here is that I have noticed my own patterns changing. I still use my RSS Feed Reader, but I have far less feeds that I look at regularly. Instead I keep my finger on the pulse using twitter. Apps have been released recently, such as Fever, which try to combine the RSS Reader with the social recommendations side of Twitter which I think is a really cool idea. But really I’m interest to see what other people are doing. Do you think Twitter is replacing RSS? Which method of keeping up with latest news do you prefer? Have you switched to Twitter or are you a hardcore RSS fan?