If you assumed that the label "RSS", included RSS of various flavors, Atom and PubSubHubHub, how would you describe a good alternative to that?
My assumption is debatable for sure, but I'd like to hear what folks think is lacking.
My assumption is debatable for sure, but I'd like to hear what folks think is lacking.
Twitter works for many more people because there is One Place for those data streams. CNN, Comcast, Oprah they're all at and on "Twitter". If you want to subscribe to a Twitter stream there's a clear and unambiguous way to 'hook in' and the data stream is of a consistent form.
RSS, on the other hand, involves hunting about pages looking for feed streams that may not exist, possibly installing plugins to simplify the process of adding those streams (once found), getting a reader, having no idea what type of information you'll be getting back [1], nor the form of the posts [2], nor having any consistent method of feed interaction [3] and no easy way to delegate your list of sources to one or many friends who will then curate the source news for you.
Basically, RSS allows specific readers to suck, it allows specific feeds to suck and it allows the whole experience to suck. Twitter isn't the best, but the whole thing is easy-to-use, consistent and dependable. Similarly with the 'like' functionality of Facebook.
[1] filtered list of content? way more than you wanted? old? buggy and re-spamming you with old stories? buggy skipping stories?
[2] full content? abbreviation? uselessly-short abbreviation? sane links for sharing? short links? ads? obtrusive ads? poor formatting?
[3] Do I click the RSS headline to see the full post? The link the post referred to? Some lame on-site redisplay of what was already in my reader, because I was expected to click some image button in the summary?
I can paste any website's URL to Google Reader to subscribe to that site's RSS feed.
What kind of a standard way is there to find out the Twitter feed of a random website or blog I happen to run across and want to follow? Do I search for the author's name on Twitter? Can I be sure I get all the posts and not some other crap he's tweeting?
The primary use for Twitter is to find feeds directly on Twitter. Either by searching or by seeing who your friends follow. Which is what most people do. They sort through what their friends follow and pick and choose from that. Adding a few additional feeds here and there, but those being the minority.
That's what Google Reader's social widgets were trying to replicate. That's what Buzz was trying to replicate. Discovering feeds from friends. Because most users don't discover new sources for themselves.