From Google Reader to Twitter
First, here’s a little background: I have been an avid Google Reader user for well over a year now. I subscribe to about ten news feeds of sites that I would previously visit on a daily basis. What I like about Google Reader is that I never miss an article. It has become such an integral part of my life that I find myself checking my Reader at least every hour. Then, I discovered Twitter, and everything changed.
When twitter first came out I, like many others, criticized it for being a blogging service that encourages people to write about every minute of their boring lives. I was reluctant, at first, to even try Twitter out, having heard all the jokes about people’s ridiculous “bathroom tweets.” You know what I’m talking about. But, as Twitter continued to gain popularity and internet buzz, I had to know what the big fucking deal was. So, for the past month, I have tweeted, followed, and retweeted, and here’s my story.
At first, I only followed people I knew, and I tried to keep my self-narrative life story tweets to a minimum. I didn’t see how tweeting and following accounts differed from Facebook status updates, and, if that’s all you use Twitter for it really isn’t different.
The next step was to follow some of the popular accounts on Twitter which, at the time of this posting, Aston Kutcher maintains one of the most popular accounts accounts. I’m not a huge fan of the actor, but his online presence is outstanding. He is very involved in social networking, and being mentioned by him online is probably worth more than months of Google Advertising. He has a large, loyal following, and his Twitter account is simply a medium he uses to communicate his opinions and interests to the millions of Twitter accounts that follow him. He’ll post websites, news articles, youtube videos, pictures, and much more. This is when I realized it, that Twitter to me is the “What comes next” after RSS feeds. This was new to me, but was also mentioned in a Techcrunch article: Rest in Peace, RSS.
I found that all of the feeds that I subscribe to in Reader have a Twitter counterpart. I followed all of my favorite websites, and even found some new ones that I liked. The great thing about Twitter is, I still never miss an article, but I also cut out all the crap. Micro-blogging is a great service when paired with traditional blogging. It is now possible to, more efficiently, read through countless articles, and read into the ones that I find interesting. I basically get to read a summary of every article before I decide whether I care to dig deeper or not.
Rest in Peace, RSS, you served me well, but you no longer serve a purpose in my life.
