I have this theory. There should be a golden balance between RSS subscriptions and Twitter (you should follow me). I haven’t opened my RSS reader in months, and when I did it was obviously quite full. Why haven’t I touched it? Because of Twitter and the fact that everything important ends up there, and gets ReTweeted to oblivion.
Franky said it best: “If it ain’t on Twitter it ain’t important enought”. Or something like that.
Did I miss anything these past few months? Probably, but on the other hand I got a more diverse scope of stories from sources I might not have in my RSS reader. And I’ll tell you one thing: I follow a lot of feeds, or used to at least.
So today I’m starting an experiment. I’m deleting all my subscriptions (without saving the OPML file, screw that!) and now I will only add things that I feel I don’t get enough of through Twitter. And just to prove I can put my money where my mouth is, here’s the whole procedure:
Clicking the Settings link top right brings me here, where I marked all feeds and…
That’s right, I hit the Unsubscribe button! Did it feel weird? A bit, but also good. I dislike clutter, and the RSS feeds felt like unnecessary clutter to me.
This is what I’ve got now:
It’ll be interesting to see how many feeds I end up with this time. My guess is not too many, and I’ll be very hard on the ones I do subscribe to – should they not deliver I’ll unsubscribe right away.
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Oh det där skulle jag också behöva göra
“If it isn't in my Twitter feed it doesn't exist”? Bonus: I can spot an MG Titles from at least 3 backbones away.
Alltid härligt när det är tomt och fint. Det är ju inte bra när man börjar känna press för att man har 500 olästa inlägg i Google Reader, de förstör glädjen i att läsa dem.
Thanks for the comments guys, let's keep it English though.
[...] Rebooting RSS in the time of Twitter En modig man. Själv kan jag inte leva utan Google Reader. (tags: twitter rss googlereader) [...]
[...] Rebooting RSS in the time of Twitter [...]
Interesting post. In my pov, the RSS reader is very complementary to Twitter.
To me, the RSS reader gives me “objective” news from niche news sources which I have categorized very thoroughly. Being able to “read all” in each of the categories for a start, I have no problem getting “All items 1000+” as I prioritize the feeds based on the categorization I have set up. The only thing I miss here is the ability to nest folders of feeds into each other with sub-categories. Hopefully something Google will introduce.
I actually even use the RSS feed for some “monologue” Twitter accounts that are interesting, and follow them in Google Reader instead as they just clutter up my Twitter account. Frankly, I have found it easier to get around “filter failure” in Google Reader by categorizing feeds there than by categorizing Tweets. Particularly as most people I follow on Twitter do write about so many different topics using the same account and often write in English/local language with the same account too. Some of the information is very personal, some could be business related. It is simply not well filtered to begin with.
Well, guess we are all different, but if “Twitter only” really works for you and you can categorize it and filter through all the information you receive there in a good way, it must be great. I just can´t see how you can do that efficiently.
If you would have the time, a post on how you use Twitter would be interesting to me.
Thanks for your insights, very interesting. I will indeed follow up on how me relying more on Twitter rather than RSS works our, and how I'll (hopefully) manage a balance between the two. There is no doubt that RSS is a great tool and that it can be used in a variety of ways. That is in part why I find this experiment interesting.
[...] Rebooting RSS in the time of Twitter- TDH rensade sina prenumerationer. Börjar på ny kula, i Twitter-tider. [...]
Such a interesting post because there is no doubt that RSS is a great tool and that it can be used in a variety of ways. That is in part why I find this experiment interesting..
[...] läsare minns kanske att jag länkade en post på TDH.me om ett RSS-experiment. Kort kan man säga att jag vill undvika redundansen mellan RSS och Twitter – det är mycket [...]