RSS vs. TwitterAs I was surfing through Google Reader in preparation of writing a post on a completely unrelated subject I happened across this craptastic piece of editorial bologna by Steve Gillmor at TechCrunchIT on the ostensible death of RSS. In his infinite wisdom Gillmor claims to have completely given up on his RSS reader in favor of Twitter. Whatever it is Steve is smoking it sure must be some good stuff because his barely coherent rant against RSS makes no sense at all.

I haven’t been in Google Reader for months. Google Reader is the dominant RSS reader. I’ve done the math: Twitter 365 Google Reader 0. All my RSS feeds are in Google Reader. I don’t go there any more. Since all my feeds are in Google Reader and I don’t go there, I don’t use RSS anymore.

Gillmor seemingly claims to no longer spend time reading feeds in Google Reader, instead opting to locate new and interesting stories via Twitter. The real-time appeal of Twitter is apparently more compelling to Steve than reading hours-old full-text feeds in Google Reader. Opting to return to the classic web, insightful commentary linked via Twitter is seemingly a better mechanism for Gillmor remain informed, no matter the amount of chaos or noise Twitter harnesses.

After reading the article a few times, I wonder what point Steve is franticly attempting to make. Is he saying RSS is dead, as in the masses will slowly stop reading feeds in feed readers like NetNewsWire and Google Reader? Or is it that RSS as a format is dead?

Of course, my friends use RSS, or they used to. Pretty much every blog has an RSS feed, and aggregators like TechMeme spider RSS feeds as well as the original pages on the sites. I’ve wired up TCIT, the Gillmor Gang feed, and my YouTube feed on my FriendFeed, but that’s FriendFeed using RSS, not me. I believe FriendFeed outputs RSS, but I don’t use it.

I do not use RSS either – TechMiso has an RSS feed output by Wordpress, fed in to FeedBurner and then sucked in to a large number of desktop and web-based feed readers. Since I write on TechMiso does that mean I use RSS?

That is just a minor nuance, semantics, a point not worth arguing. It does not matter whether I use RSS or some application I use outputs RSS – the point is RSS is still a viable means of syndicating content to be pulled by users rather than pushed to users.

The real gems in Steve’s thesis are the latter paragraphs, where he rants around RSS rather than about the format.

Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed – whatever they grew from, they morphed into a realtime CMS for the emerging media. Twitter, not RSS, became the early warning system for new content. Facebook, not RSS, became the social Rolodex for events, casual introductions to RSS’ lifeblood, the people behind the feeds. FriendFeed, not RSS, captured the commentsphere. RSS got locked out of its own party.

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed are all well equipped to use RSS. In fact, the latter makes extensive use of RSS to pull data from the various services FriendFeed allows users to aggregate. Only the early adopters, the crack smokers like Steve Gillmor et al, dreamt of RSS as our savior and using the format as a means of allowing a limitless amount of data to be syndicated thirty-five ways from Sunday.

Steve – in case you were unaware – RSS is a format not a religion. It is one of many tools in the shed and it has yet to be locked out of its own party, no matter what peculiar world you live in.

Today, RSS is a shell of its former self, casually subsumed as the transport for 140+ content into the social stream. There, RSS items are fed into aggregators and husked for their behavioral signals, packaged as Tweets and sold for pennies on the whuffie dollar. The mainstream media, once cowed by the fulltexters, now masquerades as blog sites and competes for shortened URLs alongside the bloggers they deride under their breath.

Is this a bad thing, to see mainstream media sitting side-by-side with bloggers all over the web? After all, the smart folks follow the trends so it only makes sense to see sites like CNN on Twitter, Facebook and all the other exciting places to be these days. Why exactly is this not cool?

I thought I’d miss RSS once Twitter took over, remembering how powerful a wave of innovation it triggered. Certainly it’s still here, burned into the circuits of the network, the memes coursing through its veins. But in the age of abundance it fostered, the core value has shifted from inspiration to the inspired, to the people behind the ideas.

I do not know about you Steve, but I have to raise the bullshit flag on this statement. There is absolutely no way in hell that Twitter can fully supplant RSS. The amount of noise on Twitter is of an exponentially larger magnitude than RSS.

While sifting through Google Reader can be painful at times, at least you know you are reading potentially insightful posts. On Twitter, users have 140 characters to write something intuitive and then link to the full post on their blog – a post that has to somehow be located through all the senseless tweets like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

If Twitter is to be our savior from the evils of RSS, and I do not believe Twitter is ever going to be such a platform, then there needs to be a lot of changes in its functionality. In its current incarnation Twitter could never fill the void that Google Reader fills.

RSS feed readers are great tools – but they are just that: tools. Does your physical toolbox only hold a single screwdriver and no other tools? No – it houses a number of tools to be used based on the job being performed. RSS is one tool, Twitter another.

The bottom line is this: Twitter != RSS. Both have their utility and complement each other. One should not be used in place of the other.

Anyone who truly believe that RSS is dead and will be replaced by Twitter has seriously got to get to the closest hospital to have their head checked. It will not happen today, tomorrow or in the foreseeable future. Get that through your thick skull otherwise you might find that you’re the one who happens to be dead.

I believe the true problem Steve is having is a time management issue. Is time better spent sifting through feeds in Google Reader or reading real-time updates on Twitter? This is the crux of the RSS vs. Twitter issue – how and where should we spend our time?

Solving the time management issue is not easy. Twitter is not to be ignored and RSS is the syndication format of choice. Striking a delicate balance between the two is what will ultimately lead down that path towards paradise.