If Twitter Is Your RSS Reader ...

There are some of you who have given up using Google Reader or Newsgator or Bloglines and are relying on Twitter for links to your favorite blog posts. And so I've taken the @AVC name on Twitter that I've been "namesquatting" on for the past couple years and turned it into an alerting service.

If you want to be alerted in Twitter whenever a new post appears on this blog, just follow AVC and you'll be alerted. This was a snap to set up via the Twitterfeed service.

I will not post normal updates to that account. If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can do that at @fredwilson.

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Comments (Archived):

  1. BmoreWire

    I’ve actually caught myself using twitter as my rss reader now as well. Only problem is timing and having too many people that you follow. For bloggers, I think http://www.switchabit.com is a good service to distribute your blog posts to twitter and auto-code them with a bit.ly link so you can track who came in from your twitter posting.

  2. berreb

    Very good idea ;)Followed.

  3. NMM

    It’s definitely mine

  4. AndyFinkle

    Thanks Fred – I have always felt that RSS should stand for Really STUPID syndication …It is IMO a “lazy” method that “grandma” would never use. Following @AVC now :-)twitter.com/A_F

  5. New West Living

    The fact that Ashton Kutcher is the king of Twitter should tell you something about Twitter. Since when narcissism and inanity have become cool?I mean seriously what sorts of substances you guys are on? Is it mescaline?

    1. fredwilson

      There’s many ways to use twitter. Some will use it the way cite. Others use it as an RSS reader. Others use it to keep in touch with friends and familyDon’t judge a book by its cover

      1. Noah David Simon

        Ashton Kutcher gets sloppy seconds. leave twitter while the going is good.Bruce Willis had the right idea… twitter ain’t virgin territory

    2. Noah David Simon

      Amen Brother! twitter is for lemmings who follow.need feed?be a man…get a Room! a friendfeed roomjust like the anus sniff crowd to fall for a social network without community walls.

      1. BillSeitz

        You don’t need a room, just an account, and you tie your twitter acct and your blog feed to it. Then both show up. (Then add last.fm, delicious, flickr, goodreads….)

  6. RacerRick

    Thank you… about time!

  7. RacerRick

    I hope it doesn’t say “new blog post” every time… I’d prefer to see a longer title/summary before the link.

    1. fredwilson

      I’ll fix that

  8. RacerRick

    Suggestion… u could also “pass links” through to Twitter/AVC using delicious toolbar and Twitterfeed.

    1. fredwilson

      I like to do that via my main twitter account

  9. Prokofy

    Yes, I gave up reading Google Reader a long time ago. Is it ok to stop feeling guilty now?Except I might come back now that they have this thing “Google Profile” where you can share the Google Reader items more easily. Except after doing this once and seeing 10 other people do it creating even deeper news feeds than the surface of Twitter and FB, I had to stop.

    1. Noah David Simon

      hi Prokofy!push it to the next level!twitter is yesterdays news.I’m glad they kicked me off

  10. Diego Sana

    Good call Fred, i’m all for twitter killing rss readers. Just a note: it’s really easy to do this using twitterfeed, but usually it takes a while after you post on your blog before the link make it to twitter (for instance, right now your new post “When A Key Man Leaves The Firm” it’s not there yet); So, since twitter is all about real-time, you might want to look at a plugin for your blogging plataform that submits your updates to twitter in the moment you publish a new post.

  11. Noah David Simon

    foolish to count on friends for RSS. it could be considered brainwashing

  12. bill_roberts

    I still keep up with my ‘regular’ bloggers through Google Reader, but I’m finding Twitter more and more useful for pointers to interesting writers and articles that I wasn’t aware of – a kind of blog discovery service. Since I try to follow interesting people, I get lots of really interesting stuff to read, but it’s not comprehensive enough to replace a regular RSS reader.

    1. fredwilson

      I agree

  13. Scott Yates

    Thank you for doing this. I’m thisclose to unfollowing TechCrunch and a few others because so many of the tweets are the same as my RSS feed.Yours is the elegant way to do it. There are plenty of Twitter IDs to go around.