Comments on: RSS is not dead, it just REALLY sucks compared to Twitter

By: Lisa

Lisa — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:25:07 +0000

Hi ya! I love Twitter too. However, there are some things I'm only able to get via RSS. I just discovered Feedly a couple of days ago (via Twitter of course). It displays your feeds that you do want to read in a very useable page. It's made reading feeds fresh and new again. You should try it out and see how you like it.

By: Nathan Bowers

Nathan Bowers — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:47:31 +0000

1) The RSS subscribing workflow needs to feel exactly like Tumblr: toggle on and off, one click.

2) RSS by itself is too noisy. It needs to be filtered somehow for “interestingness” and relevance.

By: R.G. Daniel

R.G. Daniel — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:16:46 +0000

What rubbish… they're completely different… does RSS still need that killer app? Yes, probably. But Twitter is not “easy” — it's moronic… the only “real” content (i.e. that competes with RSS) is just offered as links to sites that you might as well just get the feed for and read directly in your feed reader.

By: Nathan Bowers

Nathan Bowers — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:24:04 +0000

It doesn't matter to users whether RSS or the RSS reader is to blame. It needs to be one click toggle simple, as seamless as Tumblr following.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:48:37 +0000

Is it that RSS is painful to use, or is it that the RSS reader you have isn't where you'd like it to be?

Is the highway poorly built, or does the truck have bad shocks and too many gears (I know some have 10-20 gears; I don't know what the standard is, but 18 stands out for some reason; probably the number of wheels).

By: Nathan Bowers

Nathan Bowers — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:53:03 +0000

Valid points, but RSS is just so painful to use. So much friction.

By: Nathan Bowers

Nathan Bowers — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:37:55 +0000

By pruning I mean deleting feeds that I'm not interested in anymore or that have a bad signal to noise ratio.

I do get a lot of noise in my Twitterstream, but it's “good” noise. Brief fun stuff from people I like. RSS noise is long, impersonal, and mostly not worth my time.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:43:25 +0000

I think that they attempt to solve two radically different problems.

Twitter is useful for many-to-many "quick conversations". The 140-character limit per tweet requires that each message be clear and concise (or, at least, strongly encourages it).

RSS, is useful for one-to-many push-notification. The absence of a limit on the length of a post means that the actual, whole message can be sent, rather than just a link.

The real problem, I think, is that people use one when the other would be more appropriate; especially using RSS when twitter would be the better option. For example, webcomics with an RSS feed of nothing more than "the new comic is up" would be better served by tweeting that said new comic is up, along with a url. RSS lets me read many webcomics without having to visit each comic's site. Think about that: instead of dealing with a list of links, each of which needs to be opened individually, I can just hit "j" to go to the next item of interest (yes, using Google Reader). If I had access only to tweets, I'd need to use a mouse.

Yes, there is room to improve with respect to how RSS feeds are typically published (Google, I'm looking at you: I have never opted to add a feed to iGoogle -- I never even use iGoogle -- stop asking me!). But, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Why do we need freight trains, when we have motorcycles? Because they both have radically different capabilities. Both should be used, but not for the wrong purposes.

By: Joel Lucsy

Joel Lucsy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:53:17 +0000

Perhaps its just me, but I get waay more noise in Twitter than my RSS feeds. I follow only 91 people since I don't follow people who don't have anything interesting to say, but I have 130 RSS feeds.
And what does “pruning” feeds mean? Are you categorizing, tagging, removing, or something different? I don't remove feeds very often.
I also reads my feeds to get the news I want, not the off-topic items I get with most personal Twitter accounts. And the business related ones usually have more to say than what fits in 140 chars, so they post links to their blog, so why not just follow the blog?
I would, however, agree with you on the usability aspects you mentioned. But I do feel that you have to pick and choose where your data that you read comes from. Some information is better served Twitter style while other data is much better RSS style.