RSS vs. Twitter. Each works better with the other. And both are fast-changing.
Twitter is great at bringing you the latest topical information. But there’s a lot of noise to filter through, and it is sometimes too fast-moving.
RSS feeds on the other hand, limit content to items you’ve subscribed to. Feeds can also be a challenge to organize and filter through to reach items most important to you. The order of feeds by date and time doesn’t account for other factors that contribute to the relevance of information, such as its popularity.
RSS along with Twitter continues to gain consumer and business momentum.
Twitter is an unquestionably great tool for real-time communication. Yet, as I’ve said before, RSS is not dead by any means. In fact it is still evolving. Further, while RSS has been around for a over a decade, we are still ahead of its greatest adoption and usage traction. Thus it remains critical to use RSS in its multiple applications, and to add its power for your business advantage.
Here are other places where RSS is headed:
- Location, preference and recommendation based RSS. In the near future, RSS subscriptions will be available based on user preferences, behavior (what other sites you subscribe to or visit), as well as yours or others’ location . This has the greatest potential to expand distribution of and bring more relevancy to RSS feeds.
- Beyond subscriptions. Currently RSS is limited by its subscription basis, where you must either know what you are looking for or find it in an RSS recommendation. Google Reader, the most widely used tool for consuming RSS feeds, already offers suggestions for content you may want to see based on the sites you visit and subscribe to. Recommendations like this can expand your business’ web content distribution while helping you find information from sources you’re not already familiar with.
- Greater RSS distribution from non-blog websites. While virtually all blogs continue to distribute their content via RSS, corporate and other traditional sites have been slow to recognize its value. RSS allows business to quickly and effectively distribute marketing and other information to subscribers who have already expressed interest. The corporate IT side has been slow to recognize and implement this tremendous opportunity.
- RSS advertising. Ads in RSS feeds are still relatively new and growing. This opportunity, however, is just beginning to see its potential.
- Mobile RSS. Another area that is gaining momentum, with improved apps for iPhones and others.
In conclusion, RSS remains an Internet content distribution workhorse with great future potential. Don’t get lost in Twitter to RSS’ exclusion, and don’t wait to exploit its capabilities and the power it offers.
(This is the last of my three part series on the direction I see RSS heading in business. Be sure to read my other posts, Your Business Site Needs an RSS Feed and RSS Isn’t Dead, So Better Organize Your Feed Reader).