I began using The Internet at a very young age. I think I visited my first porn site at the age of 10. Well, that’s certainly a great way to start a blog post. Maybe I should start over.
I was 10 when I first discovered The Internet. That was 12 years ago which means it was 1997 which isn’t really that long ago and I find myself referring to 1997 all of the time so it’s odd that my career, life and many of my choices leverage on something that I only discovered 12 years ago. Well, The Internet was AOL 2.0 and pay by the minute Dial-Up connections which means that I really focused on making my Internet time valuable. The days of BBS and chat rooms were really beginning to fade and I was lucky because RSS, Podcasting and Forums were really getting big when I truly got into The Internet (2003, 2004). I actually regret not becoming a part of this movement earlier on.
By the way, I’d like to preface that I just consumed an entire bottle of wine so this entry might be a little confusing. Laura usually splits it with me but she chickened out halfway through so I’m stuck finishing the bottle which means this blog entry is going to probably suck.
Anyway, Twitter is king these days when it comes to self promotion but I was reading Merlin Mann’s About Page on 43Folders when i realized that he started the site in 2004 which is when I just got started with mastering the web. He has 137K RSS feed subscribers which is remarkable and I have just under 30. Granted I launched this site 3 months ago but It’s very interesting. What is more interesting that 300 of my daily readers come from Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed. That’s a lot of visitors (for me) but it’s not 137K visitors. Merlin Mann has 40 thousand Twitter Followers which is a “crap-ton” but it’s not 137K like his RSS subscribers.
My point is, we’re in a different time. My 2,700 followers on Twitter means that I have 300+ visits to my blog every time I post a blog entry but Merlin has 137K RSS subscribers which have a lot more recognition than my one tweet saying, “I have a new blog post” His RSS feed goes to 137 thousand feed readers like NetNewsWire, Google Reader or NewsFire and mine goes to a Twitter stream among hundreds of other people and I’m lucky to get 200 clicks in the hour.
These days, you have to collect a huge number of followers to really compare to the power of RSS and I regret not entering the game when RSS was on the rise because if I had 2,700 RSS subscribers, I wouldn’t tweet out the links to blog posts on because 200 clicks wouldn’t mean shit. An RSS subscriber list like that has real value because your post shows as unread in their feed reader. Twitter is built for A.D.D. and far less valuable. I’d give up Twitter for that many RSS subscribers but it will be a long time before I have that many. Twitter is great for thoughts, sharing and collaborating but for building your website, it’s not the best tool and jumping on the RSS bandwagon these days might not be as useful as it was 4 years ago.
the way I look at it twitter can possibly drive new traffic who then may become future rss subscribers. It's only a tool after all. And then there are folks like me that aren't particularly fond of RSS to begin with.