Till recently, if you were to check for news updates or new blog posts without going to all the different sites individually, you would probably only depend on RSS feeds. But lately, many Twitter users seem to be finding less utility for RSS and are actively endorsing Twitter to be exclusively used as a replacement. We examine whether Twitter has indeed undermined the utility of RSS.
Why Twitter could make RSS extinct:
Most of the sites you subscribe to in your RSS reader will probably also be having a Twitter feed. So reading a post in your RSS reader after seeing it on Twitter becomes a repetition.
Secondly, if you like to read breaking news before everyone else, then remember that news breaks out earlier on Twitter than it shows up in your RSS Reader. While Twitter pushes tweets to your Twitter client instantly, RSS servers need to constantly ping the publishing server to check whether there is anything new to be pulled. Depending on how often this happens, you will end up with a time lag. Note however that services such as RSSCloud & PubSubHubbub are doing their bit to solve this problem by providing RSS with a real time element.
Why RSS can still survive:
Twitter only provides you a 140 character message with a link to read the complete article on the publisher’s website. RSS feeds can provide you the complete article right in your RSS reader without requiring you to launch your browser to read the article. Of course, this is assuming that the publisher has configured their RSS feed to fetch complete articles instead of excerpts, otherwise you are still forced to open your browser.
Secondly, the huge information overflow that Twitter is, if you have a huge list of people whom you follow and if you are away from Twitter for a while, its likely that you will miss a particular blog post or news article posted in your Twitter timeline. RSS accumulates all your feeds properly sorted by categories so that you will never miss or overlook a post.
Role of the Mobile Web in Twitter’s success:
Twitter has managed to attract mobile application developers to create a plethora of apps for the mobile. This has made it very attractive & convenient to follow Twitter streams on your mobile even when on the move. In comparison, RSS readers for the mobile continue to be elementary. On the desktop, the scenario is not too different, with numerous applications being available for Twitter on the desktop than for RSS.
Conclusion:
Twitter & RSS can co-exist, and we are not referring to subscribing your Twitter streams as RSS feeds. RSS will continue to act as an able backup to read posts which you have missed out on Twitter, or to read complete posts without opening your browser. But that’s what RSS has become: just a secondary backup! The new primary source for following news is Twitter!
