It seemed inevitable, with enough backlash, that Google could be persuaded to reverse its decision to shut down its RSS reader. However painful it may have been, Google stuck to its guns and we now live in a (two-month-old) world with no default RSS client/backend. Like many, I exported my data ahead of the shutdown and tried Feedly, Feed Wrangler, and Feed Bin, but none of the alternatives were a good fit. So I turned to Twitter as a solution, mostly out of desperation.
There’s not an automated process to transition from RSS to Twitter lists, but the benefits of getting updates quicker (than RSS feeds got updated) do make up for the the initial effort. You also get the convenience on mobile devices of not having to jump in and out of multiple apps.
The Basics
I set up a private list in Twitter called, appropriately enough, “RSS.”
I looked at my RSS feeds and tracked down the corresponding Twitter account for the different sites. I was able to duplicate my feeds about 95%.
It’s incredibly useful to be able to group people or companies into different lists, but Twitter doesn’t make it easy to use in its own apps and website.
Setting up a list on Twitter’s website, once you log in:
- Clicking the gear icon in the top right corner of the site, next to search, gets you a dropdown that contains “lists.”
- From there you’ll see the lists you’ve made or ones other people have put you in.
- If you don’t have any yet, click “Create list” under the “Edit profile” button.
To get around (slightly) quicker, you can also use the keyboard shortcut “GL” to switch to your available lists.