Call me old fashioned, but Steve Gillmor's recent post on TechCrunchIT.com, "Rest in Peace, RSS", describing how Twitter has made RSS irrelevant in the Web 2.0 world we live in, made me yearn for simpler days when your AOL homepage had all the news you needed for the day.
Sure Twitter is cool. It's reshaped how people communicate, stay connected, and keep abreast of the latest news. But I think it may be just a tad premature to be announcing the death of RSS.
RSS came out of Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group in 1995, and was first introduced by Netscape in 1999 (Wikipedia). In other words, RSS has been around a long time in internet years (kind of like dog years, but much shorter). Twitter first came on the scene in 2006. And though all the world's a-twitter with Twitter, let's see how it will fare over time.
In the meanwhile, here at Vinfolio we support both. You can subscribe to a wide range of RSS feeds, from the latest additions to our great wine selection in the wine store, to our CEO's award-winning blog, The Wine Collector. You can also tweet to your heart’s content from our cellar management tool, VinCellar. Tweet your latest tasting notes, your latest additions to your wine cellar, or a wine that's worth checking out.
I will say that Twitter has a great shot at becoming the successor to RSS. Armed with a Twitter aggregator, today's information junkie can have his wine and drink it, too. Twitter marries the social web with the media-driven web. In other words, you can keep track of your friends, your favorite wines, and politics all in one place. Sounds like RSS, but better.
I for one am going to be curious how all of this plays out. In the meantime, I'll be tweeting and RSS-ing at a wine bar near you.
