David Sparks on the value of using RSS over social media for news curation:

The reason I’ve stuck with RSS is the way in which I work. Twitter is the social network that I participate in most and yet sometimes days go by where I don’t load the application. I like to work in focused bursts. If I’m deep into writing a book or a legal client project. I basically ignore everything else. I close my mail application, tell my phone service to take my calls, and I definitely don’t open Twitter. When I finish the job, I can then go back to the Internet. I’ll check in on Twitter, but I won’t be able to get my news from it. That only works if you go into Twitter much more frequently than I do. That’s why RSS is such a great solution for me. If a few days go by, I can open RSS and go through my carefully curated list of websites and get caught back up with the world.

I’m a big fan of RSS, and I agree with Davids point here. Social media sites like Twitter really aren’t designed for following news or blogs aside from just reading headlines. Tweets get buried within seconds, whereas RSS keeps everything waiting for you when you check it.

The simplicity of RSS is what makes it great. It’s perfect for following a small number of websites and keeping away from the clutter of social media.