What you miss in the flow

April 4, 2008 at 8:09am - View Comments

(interior picture from The Towers of Numar, by Michael Gagne)

It’s been almost two weeks since I started using Twitter as a primary source of news, links, and other fascinating bits of information. The approach has been awesome and I’ve discovered a ton of people and sites which I now return to. It’s been eye opening.

But I’ve been missing sites previously frequented. The time I’ve spent in the flow cut in to time spent reading feeds and visiting sites. And while my Google Reader feeds are grossly limited compared to the nearly 5,000 people I follow on Twitter, there is still some attachment and familiarity that goes missing.

I share my Google Reader items as a feed (RSS) or on a page (HTML), and of course it’s aggregated on my FriendFeed. I am ‘sol‘ on Twitter.

kara

Tweets during the day with the feed reader at night .
Works for me
Sol Young

I almost always get sucked in to Twitter in the evenings... But that's a great way to utilize both.
Vinnie

Have you considered wiring up your google reader feed to jabber/gtalk somehow? Since flow is working for you on the twitter side I think a stream of feeds would be just as effective.
Sol Young

Dang, I was hoping nobody would make that connection... The person to push that as a product is going to be a multi-millionaire.

Imagine FriendFeed and Google Reader and other RSS feeds aggregated in to an XMPP flow/feed/stream to a Jabber client - instant and automatic updates of everything pertinent, not just Twitter.

I'd be in heaven. I'm sure others would too.
Vinnie

I'd be surprised if google wasn't already working on something like this, given that they know the tech involved and most definitely have the infrastructure to do so.
Sol Young

I hope you're right. We're not seeing a large movement to XMPP yet. Everything is still HTTP web service based. HTTP web services are outstanding and have their place, but they don't work for a streaming system like this.
kitykity

But Scoble posts on twitter all the time... :)
Sol Young

True - but his tweets (and Dave Winer's too, who I respect and follow), get diluted by the crowd when following 5,000. And who doesn't like visiting scobleizer.com :)

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I am the manager of application development for Ingram Content Group's Philadelphia office. My team is focused on digital audiobook development, digital distribution (downloads), and client applications (Web, PC, Mac, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, PalmOS). You can reach me on my mobile at +1-707-659-6864 (70s-oly-oung) or email me at sol@solyoung.com. All opinions on my site are my own and not necessarily those of ICG.