Twitter vs. RSS - That Battle That Never Should Have Been

Published by Toronto Mike on February 22, 2010 @ 21:13 in Twitter

Back in November 2008, I created a Twitter account to test Twitter as an alternative to RSS. Would the masses use Twitter as a real-time push to blog entries over my RSS feed?

Here are the total number of subscribers right now:

1519 Twitter followers
272 RSS subscribers

I swear by my RSS feeds, but I've noted the hesitancy of the "average joe" in adopting this form of syndication. Twitter, on the other hand, seems to be more user friendly... less intimidating.

My friend and colleague Daniel makes an excellent point I believe is worth revisiting. He wrote this comment on this blog exactly one year ago this month.

Here's something that works just fine (RSS), it's a standard supported all over the place and it's essentially universal.

Twitter depends on one closed source company that still pretty much has no idea how to monetize their service (read: unstable), and it's restricted only to people using Twitter, obviously.

It just seems redundant to me: "Hey, RSS blows, I'm going to hook my RSS feed up to Twitter so that people can access my content in the trendiest, most roundabout and restrictive way possible". It's totally inefficient.

Wow I must really hate Twitter hahah....

Daniel did hate Twitter, but today he's happily tweeting at http://twitter.com/dtorreblanca/. After all, if you can't beat 'em...

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7 comments

7 Responses to "Twitter vs. RSS - That Battle That Never Should Have Been"

Daniel
February 23, 2010 / 02:04

I'm honored that you'd dedicate a post to me ;)

brad
February 23, 2010 / 08:04

rss scares me

Claire
February 23, 2010 / 08:16

I use an RSS reader every day, and like that the posts sit in there, waiting for me to read them. I find that with Twitter, the posts scroll off the bottom of the page so quickly (actually, the same happens with Facebook), that I miss a lot of what's going on... I also find that I rarely 'go back' in Twitter to see what I've missed.

Down Goes Brown
February 23, 2010 / 11:33

But how many twitter followers click through on your posts? You include your entire posts in RSS, so in theory every subscriber sees everything you write. The percentage of twitter followers who do the same is probably quite low.

I think a blog needs both traffic sources (and more). But an RSS subscribers is still far more valuable than a twitter follower.

Toronto Mike
February 23, 2010 / 11:47

@Down Goes Brown

You're absolutely right. An RSS subscriber wants to read your blog content. Without a doubt, an RSS subscriber is more valuable than a Twitter Follower.

Thanks to bit.ly, I know how many clicks each blog entry link gets via one of my tweets. For example, I see that Tom Brokaw video was clicked 140 times. That's less than the 272 RSS subscribers I have.

But, it's not that simple. People who read content in Google Reader or another RSS aggregator don't visit the site. I know I read all the blogs I follow in Google Reader. Those who click via Twitter go to my site, and are exposed to the ads that are very slowly making me a millionaire. So if the objective is site visitors, Twitter is better, and if the objective is simply having the content read, RSS is better.

As you said, both traffic sources are important. You need to promote your content via RSS and Twitter, and you need to practice good SEO techniques so Google is your best referral. And at the end of the day, content is king. DownGoesBrown.com won't link to crap.

The_Voice
February 23, 2010 / 11:55

On the SEO / Google optimization side of things, doesn't the extra link from twitter (and possible retweets) up your listing in Google?

And on the SEO side of things... is SEO a load of BS or no? (Serious question, as I'd been a believer in the early days of the web, but nowadays... not so much)

Claire
February 23, 2010 / 18:38

>and are exposed to the ads that are very slowly making me a millionaire...
Actually, this is one reason I prefer reading content via RSS than actually going ot a site to read a blog; the majority of feeds are still ad-free...

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