Comment by catch404 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by catch404 | Hacker News Reader

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I'd been thinking the exact same thing on the drive home today, expanding on an earlier thought I had that twitter is RSS done right. http://twitter.com/catch404/status/24605947455

I think they did this by providing a consistent format (both data format and by enforcing limits), a central view and a usable api. RSS/ATOM just didn't get this right. Twitter forces people to get their message across in a small amount of characters. RSS/ATOM again is inconsistent in mainly due to it trying to be a portable medium (reading full stories in a reader). I guess the twitter model is more natural?

Perhaps there is a place for adopting a twitter based format for future rss feeds and making viewers around this.

I personally like the idea of sites having a dedicated twitter account to post updates to, I don't use rss feeds but like getting information via twitter.

I don't think Twitter can ever really replace RSS/ATOM.

I have a handful of sites I follow (as in really read every update) and Opera having integrated RSS I get a nice reminder popup whenever there's an update. For me Twitter wouldn't work for this as the amount of incoming messages on Twitter is usually to large and it would be distracting.

To be honest I don't really see any problems in the RSS system. I don't really see why enforcing a data format or enforcing limits makes it more usable? I kinda like getting comics delivered straight to my browser's RSS feeds and being able to read blog posts directly in there as well.

Now Twitter would make for an exceptional social RSS where I could find one-of articles related to my interests. Which I guess seems kinda similar to FriendFeed (which I've never used since no one I find interesting is on there) or Hacker News (but without the discussion and a slightly different topic selection).

The main problem I have is that people keep insisting on posting completely uninteresting tweets (such as what they're doing) or using it as a conversation tool. This kind of noise tends to drown its use as a social RSS feed for me.

The method I described would only have the same amount of traffic as an RSS feed as it would just be updating headlines.

I guess it just depends on use. I never got into using an rss reader but follow a bunch of projects/people/companies on twitter and can quickly browse their updates, and follow a shortened link. I like the portability of twitter over different platforms too.

Just suits how I work.

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