We normally wouldn’t link to something from the TechCrunch gossip empire, but for this we’ll make an exception. Steve Gillmor (a.k.a he of little coherency) has posted on TechCrunchIT that RSS is dead. The premise of Gillmor’s rant (and to be fair, it’s moderately coherent) is that Twitter is replacing RSS as a way to keep up with the latest news.

Lets start with where I agree. Yes, Twitter is becoming a great platform for breaking news. The Inquisitr’s Twitter feed, which consists only of our updates has 1,347 followers as I type this. That makes it our third largest feed after the main feed, and the tech only feed. But lets put that in context: it’s a service that only offers headlines and links, as does every other site that offers the same links in this way. However, I’m grateful for every follower, and given our growth trend I’d bet that within the next 12 months, there might well be a time that our Twitter account has more followers than our main feed, and that is impressive.

But that’s where the positives end. Lets not forget that for a lot of sites, the RSS feed is what is being used to make those Twitter updates to begin with, but that’s a side, yet relevant point.

The real difference is in the user experience. The difference is that in an RSS reader, you are offered a full read, vs Twitter with a headline and link. For anyone wanting to keep up with the latest news, or monitor various topics of interest, that’s a key difference. Headlines don’t tell the story, text does. Of a morning I read something like 300 sites, mostly in full (and where not in full, with an extract, which is more than Twitter.) There is zero way Twitter can replace that experience.

The question then becomes one of dead or mainstream. Gillmor makes the mistake of saying dead, and that’s his fatal flaw. RSS isn’t dead, but likewise I’ll accept that updates via Twitter could become more mainstream than RSS services. But besides Twitter, there is a still a vibrant, and active community using RSS. I don’t have hard numbers, and I recognize that it may never really, truly became mainstream, but likewise it’s still a significant number. I only need look at the often nearly 100 Google Reader shares I see every morning. I need look no further than FriendFeed and see the shared Google Reader items.

RSS may not be perfect, and it may never really become “mainstream,” but it most definitely is NOT dying.

Related posts:

1. No surprises in CEOs using Twitter
2. Well may we say God save RSS, because nothing will save stupid pundits
3. Howard Stern Takes On Twitter

Today we get the latest full ongoing back-filling explanation of Twitter. The idea that Twitter was created in seven days by FriendFeed is one of several XMPP bone scans currently being pursued. In a post modern deconstruction this afternoon, God confirms a birds nest and tree makes little Twitters. FriendFeed makes only small demands on the tree, but balances this with sunshine and soil

Others suggest that evolution was an important part of Twitter. To summize the concept, from small ameobas, big Twitters grow…or was that a Beatles song? Combine evolutionary XMPP over IM to create soaring eagles over the battlefields of Iraq. The American Eagle, splendid in its foreign policy disaster habitat.

A work-around for the limitation of the Twitter is to add pizza. Pizza creates big birds, and Sesame Street has been going nearly 30 years, compared to Twitter’s 30 minutes, at least at the time of writing. The rain in Spain falls mainly at 164 South Park, San Francisco.

Firehoses make great fountains for the Twitter. The data of water breathes life to the restless bird, allowing it to soar again over the hippy alternatives from north of the border. Blame Canada isn’t just a song book from a television series of the same address.

Translated: peanut butter. It tastes good, particularly smeared on roasted bird.

Tracks rock the bird as well, like they rocked Bowie’s seminal Pin Up’s in 73. I still remember the day the album was released on 8 Track, as I’m sure many of you reading this well. The album summed up Twitter well: I Wish You Would (work), Everything’s Alright (the pingdom song), I Can’t Explain (why we are down), Friday on My Mind (pass the bong), Sorrow (Bezos kicked our asses), Don’t Bring Me Down, Shapes of Things (to come)…Where Have All the Good Times Gone.

Despite Twitter’s best efforts to restrict access to spammers, BarakObama314 continues, a duck is shot in the woods, and nobody hears it. The Chinese have joined the space race, and Wal-Mart is sponsoring the moon mission. Let Carl Sagan truly summize the meaning of the Twitter, in this incredible video from the youtubes.

(img credit)

Related posts:

1. Bird Identiflyer. It’s Caller ID For Bird Songs
2. Twitter hacked – Again!
3. For Twitter, Summize would be a talent buy

Following a tip, I visited BlogSeeker to find that nothing on the site has been updated in over two months, with most of the content on the front page going back to March. The really odd thing about this service, if it ever really existed as an ongoing concern, is that it doesn’t exist in Google…or Yahoo, or even Technorati (outside of the page itself), and that’s how far I went in trying to find more about it. It’s like it never actually launched, or if it, eWeek has tried to scrub every reference to it. In fact the only links into it were some stray eWeek posts where an ad for BlogSeeker was hard coded into the posts itself and must have been too hard for eWeek to remove.

There’s also an interesting twist: the project would appear to be linked in some way to Steve Gillmor. As well as appearing as the featured blogger on the front page of BlogSeeker, the demise of BlogSeeker would appear to be around the same time as Gillmor stopped blogging for eWeek here. A failed Gillmor project perhaps? I asked FSG for comment and all I got was something about mesh and Al Capone, so that didn’t solve the mystery.

One person pointed out to me that this is yet another example of a traditional media outfit trying to break into blog tracking and failing so badly that no one noticed. Despite this being a rational conclusion, I think that if Steve Gillmor was involved that it could never be as clear cut as that and that the real reason would be far more complicated, something that I, as a mere mortal, could not understand. So be it. Either way, BlogSeeker joins the mai dodopool.

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