There is just a tremendous difference in usability between RSS and Twitter.
RSS: find the icon (displayed differently on every website), follow a multi-step process to sign up (minimum of three clicks/choices), open another application which you've never heard of before to read this information. Or, click the orange icon on your browser, which is not prominent and is totally undescribed and undocumented. Same deal: minimum of three clicks/choices.
This should be a huge lesson for all developers. You made some shit, call it RSS or Atom, that does exactly what Twitter does, only it's hard to use. People sort of use it, once they can figure it out. Twitter came along and made it one-click to follow Brad Pitt. There are great-grandmothers and 2-year-olds using Twitter, but none using RSS.
RSS: find the icon (displayed differently on every website), follow a multi-step process to sign up (minimum of three clicks/choices), open another application which you've never heard of before to read this information. Or, click the orange icon on your browser, which is not prominent and is totally undescribed and undocumented. Same deal: minimum of three clicks/choices.
Twitter: click follow. Content magically appears in whatever app you're already using.
This should be a huge lesson for all developers. You made some shit, call it RSS or Atom, that does exactly what Twitter does, only it's hard to use. People sort of use it, once they can figure it out. Twitter came along and made it one-click to follow Brad Pitt. There are great-grandmothers and 2-year-olds using Twitter, but none using RSS.