Difference Between Twitter and RSS

Twitter vs RSS

Twitter and RSS are the two ways that you can get information really quickly and direct to the device that you are using. You don’t need to go to a certain website to check whether something new is up. Twitter is a microblogging service where you opt to follow certain personalities or entities and you would be notified whenever one in those that you followed posts something new. On the other hand RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is not a service but a standardized format for broadcasting information. Information, usually titles of articles, is collated into a single file which is then presented to the user as a list. He can then choose which ones to read.

Since Twitter is just a service, you need to have an account on the Twitter site in order to start sending your tweets or to follow other users. With RSS, it is not necessary to create an account on any site as you can freely use it. You just need to have your own site from which users can retrieve the information from, unlike Twitter where all your posts are hosted within the Twitter site.

A major difference between RSS and Twitter is the limitation that Twitter has on entries as each entry can only contain up to 140 characters. This is not a technological limitation but one that the implementors of Twitter has opted to put in place in order to force users to be concise with their posts. RSS does not have the same limitation so it is up to the user to decide whether to use short or long entries. The flow of information with RSS is quite linear as users can only read entries then possibly follow the link for the entire article. With Twitter, users have the ability to post comments, message anyone, even tag certain topics and keywords.

Due to the nature of each, they have their own place in the Internet and are not really competing technologies. RSS is commonly used in broadcasting the latest news while Twitter is used for just about anything as clearly indicated by the contents of Twitter. The popularity and simplicity of Twitter has also lead to spread to other media. Although smartphones can access the Internet, and thus Twitter, even regular mobile phones can do so as well because most mobile phone companies provide an SMS-Twitter service.

Summary:

Twitter is a microblogging service while RSS is a method for information syndication

You need to subscribe to Twitter to use its service but you need to have your own site to use RSS

Twitter is very limited when compared to RSS

Twitter is two way while RSS is strictly one way

Twitter is more widely accessible compared to RSS

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