Twitter instead of RSS?

Hmm, some interesting thoughts about RSS and Twitter from Dutch entrepreneur Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten – the man behind TwitterCounter, TwitterRemote and other interesting things – in his latest email newsletter about The Next Web:

A few weeks ago we started noticing a trend: our Twitter account was getting more and more followers every day. In fact, it seems to grow faster than our RSS feed subscribers!

[…] [We] asked a lot of people on Twitter about the difference between RSS and Twitter. It seems that more and more people are using Twitter as a alternative to RSS to get their news. Some directly subscribe to our Twitter account and follow our new posts updates and some just pick up links to stories from their friends. We have started seeing a lot of retweets of our post urls and general tweets too.

It seems to me that now is a good time to register a new account for your blog (if you have one!), brand or company. Twitter is developing into a unique delivery mechanism to get your story out to your community. And contrary to RSS it also gives you tools to interact with your community and see the impact of your tweets.

I now keep a window open at all times with a search for "TheNextWeb" via Twitter search so I can see when people retweet or reply to our stories. It gives us insight into what works in a way that RSS just can’t match.

I’ve noticed the same as Boris – the growth in my Twitter followers is greater than the growth in RSS subscribers, a trend that begain about four months ago.

How about you? Do you see Twitter as an alternative to RSS?

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  4. Carl Morris

    As a reader I sometimes want a looser link than RSS.

    RSS gives me everything, so it’s for “must see” feeds. With Twitter it’s more casual – I can let it flow by and catch the odd post when I happen to see it.

    I suspect on a bigger level there are a whole bunch of people joining Twitter who don’t use RSS. And a big subset of those who couldn’t tell you what RSS is. If you want to reach those people, definitely get a Twitterfeed on the go.

  7. Boris

    TV didn’t replace Radio and the Internet never replaced the TV. Twitter won’t replace RSS but it is surely gaining market share among users as a new way to get news and updates.

    The retweets and replies just make Twitter more interesting from a publishers point of view.

    Anyway, thanks for the post and linklove!

  14. neville

    Great comments, thanks.

    I suspect on a bigger level there are a whole bunch of people joining Twitter who don’t use RSS. And a big subset of those who couldn’t tell you what RSS is. If you want to reach those people, definitely get a Twitterfeed on the go.

    Good thought, Carl.

    Twitter won’t replace RSS but it is surely gaining market share among users as a new way to get news and updates.

    Agree, Boris. I see Twitter as an additional means of connecting with people.

    the only way I subscribe to anyone’s Twitter feed is through RSS (in Outlook), rather than directly following them on Twitter.

    That works for you, Sallie, great. I also subscribe to Twitter content via RSS, usually keyword search results rather than someone’s own Twitter stream.

    So overall conclusion: no one suggests that Twitter is an alternative to RSS.

  17. Phaoloo

    I believe Twitter can’t be a replacement for RSS because RSS is more concerned on a site while you are easily flooded with tweets of many sites. Using both of them may be an ideal thought.

  19. evl

    Yeah this is great. I disabled rss because of all the splogs but if I can find a plugin that posts to twitter that will enable me to limit it to 140.

    Great idea.

  23. Guillaume

    Twitter has become an incredible source of links to valuable sources. You are right to underline that it works well onlyu when you use search tools and keywords relecant to your topics of interest.

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