austinpreneur

Twitter is my RSS reader (and OtherInbox)

I read lots of RSS and blogs (I'll collectively refer to them as "feeds"), but I don't regularly use an RSS Reader. I've toyed around with Google Reader and with Bloglines but just never take the time to go browse them. I have some feeds bookmarked in Safari and Firefox but never take the time to look at those either.

For me, feeds can be easily grouped into three categories:

• important - I want a chance to read or ignore every post
• interesting - occasionally a post is interesting to me
• one-off - a post caught my eye, but I probably won't read that blog again

I find that I prefer to read important feeds just like they were email messages. I want to see an "Inbox" with all of the new postings in these feeds and either read or delete each one. If I don't check them for a few days a bunch pile up, I want to be able to quickly browse the list of old posts to see if I missed anything interesting. Apple's Mail.app Program has a nice feature that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds in Mail and have them show up in your Inbox just like email messages. There are also other services out there such as RSSFwd that will let you "subscribe" to an RSS feed by email. I use my OtherInbox account for this - you can set up any RSS feed to automatically get delivered to an OtherInbox Mailbox just like email messages (similar to Mail.app).

The interesting feeds and the one-off feeds come to me through Twitter. I don't actually subscribe to the feeds, rather I depend on my network of Twitter friends to post links to blogs that are of interest to me. A big part of why I follow certain people is because they post useful links. Many people log into Bloglines or Google Reader to scan for interesting posts - I just watch my Twitter feed.

What is Twitter?

I would guess that most people reading this blog have heard of Twitter, but I know many don't really understand what it is. Others are concerned about sharing so much information publicly.

I would describe Twitter as a very public, social version of online chat. Instead of just sending messages between small groups of people in a private way, the messages are all shared publicly by default. This means that anyone can go and search over the things people have been chatting about - either by searching keywords or "following" certain people they know.

Like many others, I first started using Twitter in March 2007 at the South by SouthWest Interactive festival in Austin, TX (SXSW). Between blogging, Twitter and Facebook, I have pretty much stopped sending out blast emails when I find interesting things I want to share. Instead, just post them to whatever is the most appropriate place. 

If people like the kinds of things I send out, they can easily find them or subscribe to my feeds. Short links and thoughts get posted on Twitter. More private photos and personal communications go on Facebook, and longer explanations (such as this one) go to one of my various blogs. 

This is much easier for me, and reduces the email overload on everyone else. Plus I get the "social effects" of using public tools and inviting unexpected responses and synergies (more on this later).

One of the best descriptions I've seen of Twitter is from Common Craft:

Deliverability.com makes it into marketing.alltop.com

I'm proud to announce that Deliverability.com has been selected as one of the top marketing blogs for Alltop.com.

Deliverability.com is the best blog that covers email deliverability and email marketing. It has regular contributors from all of the top email marketing companies and the prime source of news, rumors and commentary from the industry insiders.

Posting from TypePad iPhone app

I'm testing out the new TypePad iPhone application. This is a picture of the cookies I baked last night, taken and uploaded with my iPhone.

I'll be at the Barton Creek Apple store tomorrow at 7am if anyone wants to join me!

(I had to come back after posting this and reformat it from my computer to make the image smaller and remove some whitespace)

Some RSS belongs in my Inbox, some in my news reader

It seems like there are really 2 different kinds of RSS feeds for me. With many feeds I want to see every post as soon as it comes out and consciously decide to read it or delete it. It's not surprising that so many people choose to read their RSS in email by using a service like Feedburner or RSSFwd to get each individual blog posting delivered as an email message.

For example, I like enjoy reading the blogs of Marc Andreessen and David Byrne. I try to read every post. So it makes sense to have the arrive in my email where they will sit in my Inbox (actually I automatically file them into a folder with OtherInbox) until I read them or delete them.

Yet there are other types of feeds that are more like reading the newspaper. They are full of many different topics and I only want to read the ones that catch my eye or are the most popular. This is the kind of thing that people read in an RSS reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines. This is how I read the blogs of all of my competitors products - I just want to scan the recent headlines I don't have time to look at every single one and if they pile up then I just want to see the most recent ones.

I wonder which is more popular? Do most people read RSS feeds and blogs from their web browser, from a specialized news reader, or by subscribing to a Feedburner email? In the past I've always used the email option if it was available. Which do you prefer?

cross-posted from the OtherInbox blog

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