An article in TechCrunchIT has raised a pretty spirited debate amongst the technology consumerist community.  TCIT author, Steve Gillmor explains how his Twitter stream has become his de-facto information outlet, replacing his need for an RSS feed.  With a title as dramatic as, “Rest in Peace, RSS,” it’s no suprise at the attention this post has received.  With 500+ comments, it has sparked many conversations concerning the future of RSS and the value of Twitter’s real-time platform.

So are we really supposed to believe that Twitter has killed RSS?  Have real-time tweets replaced the aggregated RSS feed?

Very simply, the answer is NO.  RSS is superior to Twitter in regards to information consumption.

Suggesting that Twitter has killed RSS, is almost like suggesting that Direct Messages (DMs) have replaced email.  Twitter’s platform, at this stage, is just too raw and undeveloped to treat it as one’s primary source of information.  The “noise” is simply too loud, and often overwhelming, making it nearly impossible to find the desired “signals.”  Wading through this noise is not only hard, it’s extremely time consuming.  Until we have the effective search technologies and filters to utilize, RSS remains the simplest and quickest way to consume content from around the web.

Although I disagree with Steve Gillmor’s RSS-ditching behavior, I do believe that this discussion is rather interesting.  Probably because I feel that RSS is NOT the most efficient model for information gathering/sharing.  RSS shows many promising features but lacks certain functionalities that we expect from today’s social web.  So while I will challenge those who claim they receive greater value in Twitter’s platform compared to an RSS feed, I will agree that we have the ability to improve upon RSS’s current offering.  The solution likely lies in an effective integration of both the reat-time and the aggregated feed platforms.

So before we are able to separate the noise from the news, I wouldn’t call RSS dead just yet.