Tech writer Don Reisinger feels that you can use Twitter to effectively replace your RSS reader. He makes a case for following everyone that follows you and following every site that you have in your RSS reader.
I can’t say I completely agree. Here’s why: for starters, I follow easily over 200 RSS feeds, and I use Netvibes to categorize those info sources into subject areas that I may not check for weeks. If I used Twitter solely, I may miss many of those new entries or simply not have been ready to digest that type of content.
Second, my RSS reader keeps track of much older content and allows me to bookmark it, Facebooks it and yes, tweet it. If I only used Twitter, I would simply miss many stories.
Third, the Twitter web interface isn’t the best thing in the world for scrolling back through the past day of content, yet alone a week’s worth, and that’s sometimes how backed up my RSS reader gets, but that’s ok, b/c most of the content is still in there to be perused at my leisure.
Now if you don’t have that many feeds and/or are focused on a narrow field, then Twitter may serve you very well. Who knows? Perhaps Twitter may yet evolve into something that competes with today’s RSS readers. For now, I don’t think it fits the bill.
