scobleizer’s posterous

That said, I'm intrigued by the idea of Lists on Twitter, which I don't have access to yet.

Great post.

Matthew: every day there are fewer and fewer RSS feeds that aren't on Twitter and there are more and more Twitter accounts that I would never think of bringing into a news aggregator.

One of the things slowing tech uptake by the rest of society is that you new-media pundits get so impatient you have moved on to the next thing before we've had a chance to digest your last idea.

Just accept the fact that you can't keep track of everything and take a few sips as you scan what is going on. Twitter is great for real-time instant gratification, but not everyone is one Twitter, and there are things going on that never reach Twitter at this point...and even if it did, there is no guarantee that you would see it.

Another bonus with Google Reader is that you can go back and check on material after the fact. Twitter isn't archiving that I know of...and even if people delete their content...it is still available in your Google Reader.

I would be very interested in a list of "up and coming" techie, social media and intriguing people who aren't on most people's radars yet.

You have highlighted newcomers to watch for via livestreaming video in the past and it would be great for a list or two you think tops.

But one thing that is worth remembering (and I don't know if lists fixes this) is that while Twitter is real-time, the planet isn't. You and I, for example, usually only have a couple of hours cross over morning and evening when we're both awake. That's our "real time window" - when stuff that I link to on Twitter will reach you, and vice versa.

In GR, I have an easy list of what you posted even when I wasn't awake. I can leave that list for days if I don't have the time to look through it. It's an archive of good stuff, that I can read at my leisure. For 99% of it, the fact it didn't hit me real-time doesn't matter - in fact, for a lot of it, the lack of real-time is a bonus, as it allows for corrections and refutations to filter through too.

So, having not seen lists - does it give that same non-realtime ability too? Can it effectively function for sharing when there isn't a real time relationship (as when two people are in highly-different timezones, like you and me?)

There is no way I could do that efficiently ANYWHERE! :)

In that case, I'm sold! :)

Yes, GR's slow. And I'm definitely not sharing my quirky interests so whole-heartedly—you might label me insane, weird and dangerous—this is the Internet but I have state laws and social responsibilities.

Thankfully, everyone I follow on Twitter are still interesting, not too weird nor quirky—read: techies AND non-techies—but yes, interesting.

That's why I use Twitter. Nope, not everyone does blogs.

And the techies, as Robert has said, are on Twitter.

But it still does not solve the problem of reading older stuff.

Do you honestly always read all your input streams (on twitter/friendfeed etc). I know I certainly miss stuff, and that's after nuking my follow list on twitter to 20! I'm still following 700+ on friendfeed but the lists/groups there work great at helping me keep in touch with groups I'm interested in.

I'm actually using Google Reader more now because of Twitter and FriendFeed because I can share items in multiple channels this way.

One size does not fit all and one tool cannot do everything.

Right now I have twitter, this posterious open, about 9 articles I want to read, gmail, Netbeans IDE, xampp, and a windows command line prompt

Humans are bandwidth limited. Plus, we're miserable multitaskers until we practice something so much that it becomes innate.

IdeaTagger: you obviously don't have lists yet in Twitter. And, hint: the items are still there for you. Did you check out my news list yet? It's just as good as anything on Google Reader, only without the disadvantages.

Lists you need to include: By Region (UK, Asia, Brazil, etc)

But the bigger point is it's not about consuming news for me. It's about reading. I like to absorb information, opinions and commentary. I don't really care that much about just the headlines. If I just used Twitter I would miss a lot of interesting stuff.

I really think you are making an overly broad assumption about how and why people are using these tools.

perhaps the biggest issue I've got with not switching over to Twitter completely is that some are not on twitter. I know, crazy. Even though, I'm finding myself using GR a lot less.

A few key points.

1. My Google reader is well organized into folders, some I read every single post from every feed, others I only rarely tune into (but can easily ignore). I spend a lot of time reading my "all feeds" link - but also dip into specific feeds or folders about equally often. I don't find it slow in the least.

2. I've been selective about who I follow on Twitter & what feeds I subscribe to on Google reader. I rarely follow people who follow me just because they have - only if they are someone I really do know (or if I don't know them personally have a great deal of respect & interest in what they do) and I've been unsubscribing from RSS feeds if I find I haven't been reading them (and haven't been missing that)

3. On Twitter I follow about 1300 people - but only about 30 do I send to my phone - the rest I only catch in snippets throughout the day. Generally via the Twitter website on my iphone (which I use more than any iphone app for the speed of just scanning a few tweets). So I miss a lot of stuff on Twitter - sometimes I try to catch up with someone's tweets - but mostly I just resign myself to missing a lot of stuff.

4. I do about 50% (perhaps more) of my reading of Google Reader via my iPhone - but again I do NOT use an app - instead I use the exceptionally well done iPhone web version of Google Reader which I find loads fast, smoothly & easily (though admittedly it also is missing some of the newer features such as the "likes" feature I just ignore) and is missing many of the newer stuff such as suggested feeds etc. I do a lot of sharing (often with notes), almost never "like" stuff.

I'd suggest that you unsubscribe from RSS feeds you subscribed to only for (or mostly for) breaking news (of any type - but especially tech) and subscribe instead to feeds which cover topics & tend towards long form content vs. breaking news. Most of the feeds I read in full tend to cover topics few if any of the folks I follow in Twitter do - and do so in very long form.

I see Twitter very differently from Google Reader - in part because I rarely follow links from Twitter - I do, but certainly not every link (and almost never videos since I'm usually on my iPhone, rarely images either for much the same reason - also almost never links that appear to be to music)

It comes down to your style I guess - for learning, and consumption of information, I feel GR works better. For sharing and distribution of information, Twitter may be the best fit...Just my opinion.

But I am not arguing that everyone should use services the way I do. Whereas you appear to be arguing exactly that. If Reader doesn't work for you then don't use it, but why consistently push for everyone else to do the same thing?

Twitter is cool. Lists look really promising (I only just got them though). But that doesn't meant that Twitter is the solution for everyone or the answer to all problems.

I will agree though that Reader's social features need some tweaking to combine common shared items into a single thread. But at least I can engage in some sort of conversation on Reader. I can't on Twitter.

I love being first and pushing people to cooler and greener pastures! It's not for everyone! :-)

Just something to think about.

Before even Twitterlists came into equation, I've hardly used GoogleReader anymore. Most of my real time info comes within seconds through Twitter. It's mind blowing and awesome.

From my observations reading other tweeps' stream, there is quite a majority of people who share same view as you. They hardly read their subscribed RSS streams anymore and obtain their daily news through Twitter, sometime several times a day.

I am one of many as yet that do not have TwitterLists feature. Nonetheless, what I've read from articles on subject & friends who are fortunate to have it, it seems easy to set up and pretty similar to group set ups in my Tweeterdeck/ Hootsuite.

I believe there is a maximum of 20 group lists allowed for TwitterLists. In this vain, I've already organised my groups in 20 lists as detailed in my follow friday posterous blog. These 20 groups consist of areas of interests from technology, celebs, humour, quotes etc.

In conclusion, there are good points made in comments for or against. It seems to me whether you use TwitterLists, RSS feeds (GoogleReader as example), or combination of all, it really depends on one's personnality, learning tastes and learning curve styles. I say each to their own then.

Personally, I find Twitter to be a great source for breaking news. When I want a proper read though, I turn to Google Reader. There is a big difference in reading 140 char announcements and multiple-paragraph articles. I think ideally Google Reader should provide some sort of integration with one's Twitter feeds and/or lists.

I don't have Twitter lists yet.

Now, can you hook me up with some Twitter List love? ;-)

Besides that, i think twitter can't be compared to RSS. RSS is for news. You can read entire articles in your reader. Twitter is up to 140 characters, so you will still end up clicking a link to a website.

Feedafever has a nice iPhone interface too ;)

Lists solve the speed problem. You probably haven't gotten that feature yet, but it invalidates a lot of your points.

I'm one of those people that keeps on top of their feeds daily, going from 400 unread to 10 unread in an hour or so. I have used many different Twitter clients (Brizzly, Twitter.com, Seesmic, Tweetdeck) and I just don't like the layout compared to gReader's clean interface. I also prefer a web based Twitter client as a separate tab in my browser instead of a desktop client. I wish there was a web based twitter client that would show me unread/read item distinctions in Twitter. That is a big deal for me that gReader does.

I guess I can sum up my preference for gReader as follows:
1. Clean interface
2. I don't miss anything
3. Better organization using folders/feeds
4. There are some RSS feeds that are not avail in Twitter

Robert, I look forward to your counterpoints. I guess I'm still searching for the right solution for me.

I feel like I still need to go through my RSS reader every day--to keep up on news and to add value to my followers through the items that I share. Feedly makes it so much easier for me to accomplish those goals.

You should give it a try;)

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=How_to_tell_you_have_a_problem&entry=3434255473

Basically, I think you confuse your very outlying usage model with general use...

http://www.oldmedianewtricks.com/new-tricks-use-friendfeed-to-keep-up-with-your-digital-contacts/

http://www.oldmedianewtricks.com/new-tricks-use-friendfeed-to-keep-up-with-your-digital-contacts/

I understand the need to remove redundancy. I expect google reader will go real time as more folks use pubhubsubbub and rsscloud.

Information transferral "wants" to be instantaneous.
That's the trend I've seen for years.

I use it as a supplement to Twitter, for Flickr sets, etc., but I don't expect it to be cutting-edge, or timely.

I'll still use RSS for news because I prefer to see the full article rather than just a headline and link, but the new lists feature will possibly take over from the Twitter feeds in GR. Only if Twitter makes all archived tweets available though.

Twitter won't understand the RSS feed sites offer me to follow them. RSS feeds can be sanitized by Feed Rinse and such. (http://tinyurl.com/yj3y255)

I still see a place for Google Reader on my Igoogle page, even though it doesn't get as much priority attention as Twitter does.

Just two tools used for different purposes, but I don't see Twitter replacing my RSS reader. I suppose the main reason is I never (really) used Google Reader as a social platform.

Oh, and on point 3, the 1000 unread items. Just treat it as a highscore. As long as you are at 1000+ you are following sufficient sites. If you are below 1000 it means you are in danger of having nothing to read and you should find some more interesting sites to follow.

What can't I do? Anything useful, that's what. I can't create a list that looks for hashtags, or arbitrary search terms. Heck, it can't even find users that well. A search for "Cincom" doesn't find "CincomSmalltalk", nor does a search for "Smalltalk".

So let me summarize:

-- lists are folders for twitter
-- they don't let me do useful searching
-- the searching they do allow is broken

Wake me when it works.

If the solution to Twitter's limitations is to download a client then as far as I'm concerned that's not a solution.

And, honestly, why? I get that you've made a name for yourself as the uber-reader, but what fundamental work value do you get from all those bajillions of feeds? Are you going for a record or is there some productivity benefit those of us who haven't risen to your level can derive by mad following?

And how much time each day do you devote to feed watching? Is it like email, where you allocate a few hours each day to work through your Twitter? or do you have some other technique?

Colored me amazed... and baffled.

I live in Denmark and must of the people I know don't even know Greader or Twitter. Therefore I have no social interest in either of those. I use Greader to gather information of interest and fortunately Danish website are catching up now and almost everyone are delivering a rss feed.

But if I could foresee about the future I really don't expect twitter to be inheritor of rss here in Denmark. But that'll be interesting to see!

The 1,000+ may make you feel guilty but its better than not knowing if you are missing an item of interest because you aren't following the right person or you didn't go far enough back.

Most would see news faster in a reader vs Twitter if they watched both. Headline scanning is also much easier to focus within GReader. Sharing in GReader is also just as easy, if not easier than a RT.

I'm curious because I have done all these things and I think people loosely use the phrase "study users" when they shouldn't.

One more thing....with tridroid on this baby, my twitter usage went up too!

Google reader to follow news, content and information and share across multiple streams (it will share to FB, Twitter Posterous, digg and more via the google share feature.) I also like the favorite feature functionality and the hyped up type profile with your shares that it creates as well.

I'll continue to do both. I subscribe to some blogs that are not followed on twitter and follow some twitter people whos bloggs I dont subscribe too.

Static brands on twitter (no people or conversation behind the tweet) I prefer to keep that within (reader format to consume more than 140 characters) and keep twitter about the conversation and the flow of two way information.

I think you're confusing statistics with understanding.

I know, I'm asking too much. :)

http://scobleizer.com/2009/09/07/rssroberts-stuff-is-saved-will-it-do-the-same-for-cnns-twitter-account/

Sorry, couldn't resist. Good post.

That's like saying "I learn about how people use their cars by hanging out at mechanic shops."

We clearly disagree on what it means to "study". I think you are incapable of taking a step back and viewing this industry from the perspective of a typical user. You focus on power users constantly and derive conclusions from gut feelings.

I would LOVE IT if you collected REAL data, conducted a REAL study, and gave us some REAL conclusions. Everything else is just faith.

I think the google reader team should look at opening up its platform. An API might allow better integration into other apps. Right now its seems like a lot of the integration between GR and apps is reverse engineering. Like my site, http://alexkessinger.net, I had to do a lot off hacking to get my google reader stuff to my site.

I also agree with scoble that maintaing, editing, and organizing the social side of GR is incredibly difficult.

Also, I don't have many friends on GReader, but it's nice to have their comments on a 'share' all together, rather than it all be separate @replys that I have to sort through and deduce if they're even referring to the twitter link I shared.

Google Reader loads slow: It sounds like you're taxing the system. If you're that much of a power user, multiply and categorize your Google accounts. Don't blame your economy car for breaking just because you wanted to go 200 MPH.

Twitter loads faster: One word: Density... Loading 140 text characters per followee is a lot different than loading umpteen blog posts from multiple sources. It's like comparing one truck carrying packaged chicken to another carrying little blue birds that never land.

Sharing/Socializing: Yeah, I agree with you here, they're trying to be like Facebook/Twitter and failing at it. I stopped using those features and purged all my friends (99% of whom I know on Facebook/Twitter anyway). I'm on there to read, not interact, that's why social sites exist.

Reliability: I can count on one finger the number of times my Reader has been completely down this year. Twitter, spilled over to the second hand awhile ago.

Guilt: Twitter posts get lost in the timeline all the time, even with the lists I have no real way to keep up with 100% of what's going on. Reader telling me I have unread posts? I welcome it. And yes, I have hit the 1,000+ mark before, that's when I realized I was subscribed to a lot of crap and pared down.

News Faster: Yes, disbursing the fact something happened is faster on Twitter. Reading about ALL the facts later from a reliable source I've personally chosen? That's where Reader comes in.

Bottom line, these are two different systems with two mostly different purposes. The only real crossover is that they both aggregate information. If you want to use Twitter as your all-in-one, so be it. As for me, if I were forced to pick one, I'd just add my all my friends' Twitter RSS feeds to Reader.

Matthew: every day there are fewer and fewer RSS feeds that aren't on Twitter and there are more and more Twitter accounts that I would never think of bringing into a news aggregator."

I remember the day when you said you would not subscribe in Reader to those who used partial feeds, requiring your to click through to their blog. ahem ... subscribing to blogs in Twitter is just that. Seems that volume and quantity has overtaken quality.

I really don't care how squeaky clean your 'news brands feed' is. We don't all have the same interests that you do. Does your feed include any of the webcomics that I follow? Any humorists, musicians, science fiction writers? Even in my tech reading, I'm more interested in individual technologists than whatever 'brand', if any, they might be associated with. What clean, branded Twitter feed can I follow to read Sam Ruby, John Resig, Brendan Eich, Mark Pilgrim, Martin Fowler, or Tim Bray, filtered for 'just the interesting stuff'? No such thing; that's what blogging and RSS is for.

It's great that Twitter suits your particular needs so well. But grant that other people's needs are different, and may be best solved by different tools; and because of that, GReader is neither dead nor useless.

RSS is about INFORMATION. Twitter is about PEOPLE.

I'm more interested in information so I spend way more time reading RSS feeds. I use Twitter more to keep track of friends.

Kevin is right about the "breakfast problem."

For example, you (Scoble) have posted about 70 items in the last 24 hours on Twitter. Most of them are ABOUT Twitter. I don't have enough interest in you, or in Twitter, to read all 70 of those.

But you post one or two in-depth pieces of writing a day on your blog. Those I find worth reading, or at least skimming.

If my only choice was to follow your twitter feed, I'd just skip it.

Similarly, most of the blogs I enjoy reading write a couple of good posts a day. I don't have to find out what they had for breakfast or what they think about Follow Friday unless I want to -- and then I follow them on Twitter.

Thanks for creating those lists - the new twitter lists feature is great and all, but depends on the community to create lists of value - which is where it will win out at the end of the day.

@danielpriestley was asking yesterday about what blogs and feeds people read, I guess to expand his pool, twitter lists, if used correctly, should make that type of query a thing of the past.

I actually agree with most of the items. Especially the part about 1000+ unread items. Some OCD part of me forces me to look through them all. I've found the best thing to do is keep my number of subscriptions to a minimum. Their "Trends" feature helps me weed out subscriptions I'm really not reading often anyway. It also helps that they now offer the ability to mark only items older than a day as read. Let's me only keep up with current topics if I haven't checked in for a few days.

Bottom line, I think the comparison to Twitter is a bit awkward. They're not exactly the same, and I still prefer getting actual "articles" and not just Twitter Gibberish. And to be fair, Google offers tools to address many of your concerns.

Personally I love that you do what you want to do to be productive. It won't work for everyone, but I love your style. ;)

I am trying to follow Scoble's own news list (http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/tech-news-brands) and can't for the life of me keep up with the news flowing in right now, not to mention all the stuff I missed last night while I was sleeping.

Unless I spent my entire day following that, how could I possibly keep up? With GR, I read in chronological order, marking each one read, so therefore I can't miss anything.

I think the real problem is you over subscribe. Why do you need to subscribe to ever single source directly, that's what blogs are for. For example, I don't need to sign up for every single tech company, when I can just follow a blog like mashable, and it will give me the most important news that happens. Sure I may not know the news the second it breaks, but who cares, at most I am a few hours behind a breaking story.

Feed readers can also be used to access Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, or any other kind of content.

Twitter, on the other hand, is simply a crowded spam fest - and bears no relation whatsoever. Enjoy your time on Twitter - if you want us to follow your Tweets, why not post a feed here?

But going to the lists you've already made kinda made me feel like stiking gold. I've wanted to follow some lists - they are a pain to make so I just want others to make great ones I can follow. I'm kinda lazy like that. :)

the rest: yes, twitter is addicting but it cannot make it alone, others feed it with the headlines..

also, because google hobnobs with the statesmen and the powers that be, it will be richer and smarter than the others, even if it takes 10 years, so the reader has not outlived its utility

on the whole, your response to reader should be eagerly devoured at Google HQ because they've known it coming as even i have felt the same way when opening the reader..it's constricting and it's stuffed too thick and iPhone may not be making apps for it. However, they wouldn't shut down because of the calumny because the Kindle can.

For me GReader feels like a tank left in a desert. It's completely unsocial. Are we still in 2004? Yes, they've added "Sent to" button, but implementation sux! It opens a background twitter page, you can't select any text to show up in the update, etc. WTF do I need a whole new twitter page to share a piece of story? That's two more clicks for me.
Why when I click on Like it doesn't let me share this news with my Twitter or Facebook flock?

Friends on GReader are just one big meaningless list. Like anyone actually reads what these people share with you, when you have Tweetdeck.

And the most important.

GReader. Is. Slow.

I can't sit whole day in one tab and wait for news to load. RSSCloud/Pubsubhubbub are not supported (I have no clue what's keeping them from implementing this). You know?

It's not cusomizable. Why can't I have my news in a grid like on Netvibes? Even Bloglines has this feature! How do you make fonts bigger/smaller? Why can't you have skins?

Hope I made my point :p

I LIKE CHOCOLATE but I THINK EGGS ARE IMPORTANT

so Eggs get a star, and Chocolate gets a 'like'.

GReader can be slow, sure - that's one reason I use Bloglines in my browser, and sometimes I read feeds in other ways - Opera gets feeds at a very fast rate.

Why is this blog so keen to simply attack a google web-based application? This is the kind of ignorant raving I expect from fanboys of very limited years and education.

You can basically create your own little customizable agregator, you can subscribe to advanced searches, personalized feeds from for example delicious tags, Google calendar etc.

It could be faster, yes - or maybe even realtime. But the core functionality of subscribing to feeds, brings great flexibility.

Agree with your comment, and believe it's just a matter of finding the feed reader that suits your needs in terms of functionality.

Lists in Twitter (the equivalent of tags) do help in being able to sort and prioritise my reading, but are limited to 20 and fall way short of the ways to prioritise in Reader.

I prefer a seamless desktop - the sources don't worry me too much.