Monday, January 12, 2009

Twitter vs. Google Reader

One look at social media icon Gary Vaynerchuk’s Twitter account and he’ll tell you to keep social media simple. But do some devices make things easier or harder to optimize your search for quality content?

Clearly, Google Reader and Twitter don’t have much in common besides the fact that both boast quick notification or real-time updates. Taking a tour around Twitter can result in a whole new flow of information, friends, and lovers of your brand. You can filter through tweets that appeal and don’t appeal to you and choose whether or not to respond. It’s thread heaven for tweet-ups or web conferences now. Questions can be answered quickly because it’s quick format. Ugly interface, however.

Now, we examine Google Reader. Sure it’s really helpful to aggregate all of your blog and news content for your own personal Google account, but what about getting more out of your experience? You are so limited to what you can explore on Reader that perhaps RSS is really not simple at all. You see a number of entries pop up in the window. You read through them on the same page and think, “Is the blog worth a second look?” Perhaps that blogger was having a bad day and decided to rant instead of praise. Chances are you’ll remove their feed. After all, this is too much information and you’re crunched for time. Well, at least the interface has improved.

So for RSS, I’d hit up Twitter and check out what other people are promoting with links. Suddenly, you’re whole niche becomes a whole lot bigger and much more creative. My best content take-away has always come from Twitter.

What about you?