Why Twitter Will Never Replace RSS

RSS, since its inception and inclusion in modern day browsers, is an unmistakable godsend. It lets us look at articles from blogs, news sites, galleries, and even streams of conversation. Podcasts use it. Some sites whole content comes from RSS feeds. It is without a doubt one of the biggest factors of Web 2.0.

But interestingly, many Tech and Social Media blogs, are stating that the reign of RSS is ending, and people are now using the popular micro-blogging site, Twitter, for their streams of information. However, I see too many flaws in this argument for it to be a viable alternative.

Listing on Bing? Coz It’s Kinda Important

Bing.com, the new “decision engine” from Microsoft builds upon, Live.com and of course MSN.com. Because of this you probably think that your site will automatically be listed. Turns out mine had some trouble being found by Bing so I had to do it manually, which you can do here.

But why is pinging Bing so important? Surely it has no dent on Google.

Well, recently stats came out for June and it recieved almost 50 million vilitors for that month. You may think that 50 million is pretty small, but lets just put this into content. It got more than Twitter, which is getting publicity left, right and center. More than Digg, a very popular user generated news site, and more than CNN, one of the most accurate and well-respected news sources in America. I know that Microsoft arent competing with these sites, but to get more than pretty established websites in the first month of launch, its great. For any site that is a hug achievement, but its a momentous one for a site that Microsoft owns.

Now how did they get it? Well obviously most of that was redirected from Live.com, and even more obvious is the influx of new visitors, dying to see what the whole fuss is about. But to keep 50 million users a month, they need to start getting people to make the switch. How? Relevant searching. I’ve started using Bing, whilst going cold turkey on Google, in order to see if it has any effect on my daily search needs. For the most part, no. But there are a few things missing from the “decision engine” before I decide  to make the switch permanent. Things like money conversions are missing. The extended features the US site has is missing, we have localized search and that is it. And I dont think its integrated enough with the rest of the Microsoft websites.

Overall getting listed on Bing may not be a priority right now. But soon, we might have Microsofts second coming. And I cant wait, Google is getting boring.

Twitter Search Snub

For past two months to the people who use Twitter, I was not alive. To them I wasn’t on Twitter, I didn’t have 600+ followers and I had not tweeted more than 5000 times. I was invisible, and I may aswell have not been tweeting at all.

You see Twitter is all about finding people you have things in common with, and whats the best way to find them? Search! Searching for topics you enjoy will bring up that topic but from other peoples Twitter. There you can click into their profile and follow them, therefore building a group of people you have similarities to rather than just people you know (like what Facebook is). Its primarily a network builder for the things that matter to you.

Ask the User : What browser are you using right now?

I always love getting information to the most important people of blogs, the readers. Theyre the ones who take time out of their day to read my blog and for that I wanted to get some input from you guys.

The browser wars is a heated-argument, but I think generally its safe to say that nearly everyone in the know hates Internet Explorer. This week, I want to know “What browser you are using right now?”. Not the browser you prefer, or the browser you use generally, but the browser that you are visiting this site on.

Vote Below

[poll id="2"]

Young Tweeters

Twitter has become a definitive service for the online community. While there is no doubt Twitter’s main demographic is 20 – 35, there has been a surge in the number of young visitors, and whether it is to catch up on the latest tech, sport, news or celebrity talk, I wanted to find out why. So I asked them.

Tommy Collison is the self-proclaimed “Irelands youngest blogger”, but he is also one of the most personal too. He writes on his blog TrustTommy.com daily and at 14 years of age he became an award-winning blogger at the Irish Blog Awards. He tweets about his non-chocolate diet, his drumming and toasters.

Kevin Coleman is Irelands newest young blogger, and at 16 years of age, he set up KevinColeman.ie a blog about sport, social networks and all things funny. He’s an extremely popolar tweeter with just over 500 followers.