Does Twitter Take Away From Your RSS Feed?
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a social networking service that some people have called a mini-blog. You are allowed to send out tweets which are 140 character sentences to the people who follow you. It’s a small way of keeping people up to date as you go about your day. You can check out more over at www.twitter.com.
Twitter, a replacement for RSS Feeds?
The more popular that Twitter becomes the more I’ve heard people mention that they will not check on the RSS Feed as often. Of course this would only affect the people who you follow via Twiiter as well as subscribed to your RSS Feed.
What sort of impact can this have on you?
I don’t think it can have much of a negative impact on your RSS Feed subscribers. When someone posts a link via Twitter to a new Blog post, you would normally look at it right away, correct? I’ve noticed that some RSS Feed aggregators (such as Google Reader) can take up to about approximately 8 hours before it shows that they have posted something new. This is where Twitter can be useful. It allows you to immediately inform people of your new blog post, it also helps you share links to other articles of interest among your fellow twits.
Is Twitter the next RSS Feed service?
In short, I think it can be. Granted, the person who is following you would need to be online for it to be immediately effective. Though if you have your twitter client turned off you (should) get notices about new tweets upon logging into the Twitter service.
Will I stop using RSS Feeds?
Of course not and neither should you. A lot of people out there still don’t know about Twitter and its usefulness. Besides I like to be able to check out my RSS Feeds from time to time because I still subscribe to feeds that I won’t see ever on Twitter.
WordPress And Twitter
Duane Storey has created a WordPress plugin called WordTwit, which allows you to automatically send out a tweet once you have published a new blog post. This can automate the process for you, if creating the tweet via your Twitter client is a bit too much work.
Now if you do not follow me via Twitter, I would recommend you do. Why? Why not? Twitter can be a good source of discussion and possibly help you give you ideas for your next blog post too.
If you don’t use twitter but still want to keep up-to-date with what is going on with this blog you can do so by subscribing to my Full RSS Feed.
May 2nd, 2008 at 09:06:51
I am quite amazed in Twitter because of the well known Internet personalities who are using its service to update or announce something to those who are following them or visiting their sites. However, I do not have any idea about its impact to RSS as I just signed up in Twitter to see how it really works; and so far, I found it cool as it works like SMS. I think this is indeed a valuable tool especially to those who are working with a group where you are required to update each other’s progress.
May 2nd, 2008 at 14:22:55
Thanks for the heads-up on that plugin! I used to use twitter tools but found it to be a bit too feature rich for my purposes.
May 2nd, 2008 at 15:16:46
I use Twitter mostly to engage with my blogger friends, and the people who read me.
If I need (for some bizarre reason) to increase the readership instantly, or one of my blog posts is particularly time sensitive I will ask for immediate attention on Twitter.
If not, I normally (as you have seen) use it to converse with my friends
May 4th, 2008 at 19:31:53
This is great, I’m still fairly new to twitter. I’m still trying to wrap my hands around the theme of the website.