RSS Volume And A Twitter Shift
Apr 14 2008 
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Some interesting comments have been left on SheGeeks for the articles "Which Do You Read More: Tweets or Blogs?" and "Use Twitter In Conjunction With Your RSS Reader", that have promoted me to ask some questions.
RSS Volume
Eric Berlin points out:
I don’t think of an RSS reader as a particularly great place to do that, as there’s so much volume to dig through. Sure you can set up filters and such but that’s not going to set up a very efficient way to pick up a breaking story that could in effect be about almost anything.
Which made me think about RSS volume also. When your volume increases, are you in turn jeopardizing the noise-to-signal ratio? Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read/Write Web encourages oversubscribing in his article "Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader". However, is this really an effective means of finding good content? After all, that is one of the points of subscribing to someone’s RSS feed: finding good content.
I think we should slow down on trying to consume so much information. What Kirkpatrick encourages could result in a serious degree of information overload, especially if you’re not effective at managing your feeds. As Berlin points out, even filters aren’t 99% helpful and require a lot of time and energy, which could be better spent doing the work yourself at the end of the day.
Why not try to focus on getting the best out of a handful of sites and services instead of taking on every new one that pops up? Maybe then we’d have more time to have a conversation at the original source instead of contributing to conversation fragmentation. Maybe then we’d be able to have the time to develop more organized thoughts. Maybe then we’d have the time to simply slow down with everything we do. Maybe then we’d stop contributing to our ADHD on the web.
Is A Shift Occurring?
Another commenter, Jenny Spadafora, noted that, "I do think "breaking news" has shifted from blogs to twitter, though, in terms of awareness and discovery.
Would you agree?
I would say that a shift is starting to occur, but has not made it nor do I think it will make it. Though Twitter is reaching a tipping point, it’s not the same as RSS.
Still, I am finding lots of gems on Twitter, but I’m sure those same gems were found through someone else’s RSS feed. This all would just go back to my original point of Using Twitter In Conjunction With Your RSS Reader.
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I do have to admit, I get more of my news from Twitter during the day now. I am more likely to go through Google Reader news when I have time, but Twitter is usually up, Reader isn't.
Breaking news may be shifting to twitter, but quality/credible news will still be hard to find there. Unfortunately, the plethora of social news sites on offer don't really help improve the signal-to-noise ratio either, but a gradual shift away from popularity to quality will. I think as news sites mature, this shift is inevitable.
'slow down in order to to fast' has become a theme in the nascar cup race with the cot cars. Yeah, I can totally see how that could also apply to information consumption. However, I am a subscibed (once again) to the rss consumption practice of subscribing more feeds but don't try to read every post. I find that if I want to know what's going on all I have to do is peruse the first few pages of google reader, friendfeed, and twitter messages and I'm pretty much caught up. Time permitting I dig deeper and link through for more in depth information.
'slow down in order to to fast' has become a theme in the nascar cup race with the cot cars. Yeah, I can totally see how that could also apply to information consumption. However, I am a subscibed (once again) to the rss consumption practice of subscribing more feeds but don't try to read every post. I find that if I want to know what's going on all I have to do is peruse the first few pages of google reader, friendfeed, and twitter messages and I'm pretty much caught up. Time permitting I dig deeper and link through for more in depth information.
I do have to admit, I get more of my news from Twitter during the day now. I am more likely to go through Google Reader news when I have time, but Twitter is usually up, Reader isn't.
Breaking news may be shifting to twitter, but quality/credible news will still be hard to find there. Unfortunately, the plethora of social news sites on offer don't really help improve the signal-to-noise ratio either, but a gradual shift away from popularity to quality will. I think as news sites mature, this shift is inevitable.
'slow down in order to to fast' has become a theme in the nascar cup race with the cot cars. Yeah, I can totally see how that could also apply to information consumption. However, I am a subscibed (once again) to the rss consumption practice of subscribing more feeds but don't try to read every post. I find that if I want to know what's going on all I have to do is peruse the first few pages of google reader, friendfeed, and twitter messages and I'm pretty much caught up. Time permitting I dig deeper and link through for more in depth information.