As I start to use Twitter more and more I have noticed something that got me thinking. As a web designer/developper/blogger, I try to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the internet. My biggest leap came a few months ago when I hitched a ride on the train to Tweet Town. I signed up for Twitter obviously knowing what it was. What I didn’t know was the potential that lies therein.

Twitter creates duplicate content

I am constantly reading articles and posts online from other bloggers and site owners sharing their expertise (and lack thereof on occasion). I have my favorite sites that I subscribe to via RSS and am always on the lookout for new source of information. As I begin becoming a regular Twit, I find myself following all these same individuals, and more, on Twitter. And there’s the rub. Most bloggers (myself included) obviously use Twitter to reach a larger audience to promote their posts. If I subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed and follower that author on Twitter, I get the feed in my Mozilla Thunderbird and I see the tweet on Twitter about the post: double whammy. As I noticed this, I wondered:

“Do I really need to subscribe to a feed and follow the author?”

The end of RSS is near

I started thinking about this more when a thought popped into my head:

Will Twitter bring about the end of RSS feeds?

Maybe not now, maybe not in the near future, but maybe in the not-so-distant future I think the possibility is there. Just the same as the internet has brought about the end of print edition newspapers, the same could end up happening for RSS feeds.

Why keep RSS?

While the end of RSS may be inevitable, I currently have a need to use both. For instance, I work for a major internet software company who has a pretty strict “public web site” policy. Under this policy, all social networking sites are blocked, including Twitter. This means that for those authors who publish posts in the morning, I can’t see their Tweets stating this. Thus the necessity of the RSS feed for me.

When in Rome…do as the Twitterers do

However, when I am at home, I am following along on Twitter. I have yet to download or try out any of the numerous apps out there for following your twitter account and making reading/tweeting easier, but I plan to. The advantage to Twitter is obviously that I get to see posts and ReTweets from users sharing others’ interesting information and articles, without actually having to repost the whole article.

As a source of information sharing, Twitter exceeds RSS by leaps and bounds, there’s no doubt about it. However, with the convenience (at least for some like me) of RSS still proves worthy. Time will tell, but I think Biz may be digging a shallow grave somewhere.

What do you think? Will Twitter be the end of RSS? Leave your comments below and vote.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

In my quest to become a better Twit, I have noticed something interesting about users who promote other people’s posts. I have seen people’s articles and tweets promoted in two different ways:

RT (ReTweet) and Reading

Examples from my tweets:

RT @problogger How to Grow an Interested Following on Twitter using RSS http://bit.ly/l9IZg (via @tweetmeme) #twitterexperiment

Reading @problogger How Listening to a Waiter can Jack your Profits up 33% – http://is.gd/MFXh

I started to think about the difference between the two and couldn’t really come up with a definitive answer. Both are used to promote another persons articles/posts/sites and essentially mean the same thing “I am currently viewing/reading/intrested in this page”. The ReTweet comes in handy I suppose when the article has already been tweeted, in which case you are simply retweeting it to let your followers see what you are currently engaged in.

I myself have used both formats. Personally, I would prefer the “Reading” option to have my posts promoted by others. I think this gives more of an intellectual feel to the content that is being tweeted and therefore exudes a higher sense of authority by the author if their post is being “read” as opposed to “retweeted”.

What are your thoughts on this? Which do you prefer? Vote in our poll below and share your comments with others.
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I have officially begun my Twitter Experiment where I will attempt to increase blog traffic from, and by effectively using, Twitter. (read more about what prompted it here)

Last night I made my first “non-selfish” Tweet.

Reading @problogger How Listening to a Waiter can Jack your Profits up 33% – http://is.gd/MFXh

Before that tweet, I had 20 followers. Since that tweet (I have had no other since), I gained 17 additional followers. Are all of these followers just because of that tweet? No. Are most of them? Yes.

So with one tweet, I’ve proven (what most of us already know), it’s easy to gain followers. However, the real test of the experiment will be if I can increase my traffic to my blog from twitter or not. Subscribe to my feed to keep up to date on the status of The Experiment.

The market for using these new types of technologies is still growing and is rather fresh for most companies. Many businesses do not use the social media and web apps at all to market or make their businesses run more efficiently, mostly because no one is laying it out for them in a fun and easy way.

I thought to myself “How can I expound on that? How can I help show people how to use social networking to their advantage?” I pondered over this for a while before realizing “I’m not the best person to do this” as I am a fairly new passenger of the “social networking train” having only recently punched my Twitter and Facebook tickets about 2 months ago. However, blogger Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has started a site for exactly this purpose: Helping people (and businesses) use Twitter effectively.

So what does the second article have to do with this post? As I read through Kevin Geary’s guest post at ProBlogger, I realized that I am guilty of number 4: “Making Twitter all about you and your blog.”. In that point Kevin says

The people who are breaking Twitter (yes, it’s being torn down in terms of value as we speak) are the ones who use it to promote only themselves and only their blog. They’ll throw a retweet out there every once in a while and join in on a #followfriday session, but that’s about it. Their main goal is to drive traffic without adding any value. And who can blame them? It’s free and easy.

If you take a look at my twitter status, you will notice how guilty I am – just how much of a “twitter spammer” I am. So far a mere 2% of traffic to my site has been referrals from Twitter. Obviously I am not using it effectively.

So how am I going to use Twitter effectively? Well first and foremost, I need to follow Kevin’s advice and not make twitter all about me. I have, to this date, not followed one single person that I do not know personally (with the exception of the ESPN follows and Stephen Colbert). So, I need to start following other people in my field/niche first of all. By taking advantage of the information and knowledge that other people posses, I can expand my own knowledge. Secondly, ReTweet something, or lots of somethings. I will shy away from my “twitter spamming” ways though and only ReTweet the content I find useful and worth sharing. Lastly: read, read, read. I will obviously be starting with TwiTip.com as my source for all things Twitter, but will be Scouring the web for more Twitter information to help me become a better tweeter and less of a spammer.

This will be a 2 week experiment on using Twitter effectively and the difference it can have on my site. I will keep track of my referral traffic from twitter, as well as my “following” and more importantly, my “followers” and content of mine that has been “retweeted” during the course of the experiment to see what kind of progress (if any) I will be making. Check back often to see the results of the experiment.

Of course it’s not all about me (as I am learning). What methods have you used to grow your business/site traffic with Twitter? Share with others in the comments below.

Yesterday I wrote an article titled “Increase traffic to your blog by sending people away”. It discusses the benefits of gaining readers for your blog by linking to other sites from within your posts. If you read that article, you will notice a prevalent theme of “don’t be a small fish in a big pond”. By that I meant, don’t be one of the many sites linking to a popular blog. Instead, be one of the few sites linking to a smaller blog as you are more likely to be noticed by those sites. At the end of the first paragraph I posed a question how do you find sites to link to? Today’s post is a follow-up that helps answer that question.

I didn’t realize this myself, but I answered this question today as I was searching around through digg looking for interesting articles. I like to search through the “Technology > Linux/Unix” and the “Technology > Programming” categories as they are relevant to my blog. However, by default digg goes to the “popular” posts first. At least in the Programming category, the majority of the popular posts are these “Top 40″, “10 Best”, “100+ Tools”, etc type of posts and I don’t know about you, but I get a bit tired of seeing these. However, in each category, you can also click on the “Upcoming” link to see sites that have been recently dugg as there are many more of these than in the “Popular” category and you are more apt to find the smaller sites that I mentioned to link to. Granted, there is a lot more to wade through to find the good content as many authors like to get all their friends to digg their posts to artificially inflate the ranking. I don’t condone this, but I know it won’t go away. On occasion, if I feel I have written an exceptional article, I will digg it myself, only to get it into the database, and then rest on the hope that others will find it just as intriguing. If you digg your own articles, use discretion. Not all of your posts are going to be digg-worthy, and that’s ok. Save this for your best articles.

Update: I recently came across an article from ProBlogger about exactly the point I make towards the end of the above paragraph. See point number 6 “Submitting all your posts to social media sites” in the article How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies

StumbleUpon also has a feature similar to that of Digg’s with the “Recently Rated” category, although you are not as likely to find the smaller sites as often even the “Recently Rated” can turn up popular sites. Delicious also has the “Recent Bookmarks” page to which you can then narrow down by tags as well.

The bottom line is, whatever social networking/social bookmarking site that you use, don’t immediately go for the “Popular” posts page as you risk drowning in the sea of links. Instead, find the pages that other people havn’t found yet and give them a link, a comment, a digg, or a stumble.

What techniques or sites do you use to find blogs worthy of linking to in your posts? Share with others in a comment below.

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