There have been conversations recently about abandoning RSS readers, and specifically Google Reader in favor of using Twitter as a human filter for information. The idea is that if you follow smart people, they read good material and will pass that along to their network - you.
Part of me says, maybe. Somehow I think that if you come across a really good post filled with juicy information that will make you look good when you implement it, you'll probably keep that more to yourself. Maybe use it to build on when you write on your own blog. How far off am I?
Others, are in favor of continuing to use Google Reader.
To me, it's not a choice between one and the other - it's about integration.
- Twitter is great for discovering what people are talking about.
- Google Reader is great for discovering what they think.
The image above illustrates my recent monthly Google Reader activity, which is fairly proportional to the number of new posts in the 193 blogs I syndicate directly, plus many of the blogs my network shares in Google Reader. The counter says it's 3,289 posts. I share a little bit on Google Reader, but it's minimal at this point - 17 for the month.
Instead, I share a lot of good posts and content on Twitter. My HootSuite stats tell me that I shared 123 posts netting a total of 9,505 clicks.
The most popular were content that contained free information and insight, was unexpected, and sounded very useful from the title. We analyzed the type of content that fares well in my Twitter stream before.
While you currently can't make a feed from a Twitter list, Google Reader is actually an excellent companion to Twitter.
Using Google Reader and Twitter together frees you from using Twitter's clunky search tools or having to watch your stream in real time.
You can import the following things into Google Reader:
1. Your Twitter time line (format it, this will be a lot of data)
2. All tweets mentioning you
3. Your favorites (a good way to save data)
4. Other person's favorites (let your friends curate content for you)
5. You can do saved searches
Those are 5 things you can do to make Google Reader and Twitter work together, saving time and creating a data base of all that information at the same time.
Once it's in Google Reader, you're golden.
What are your reading habits? Do you use Twitter as your filter these days? Why/why not?