Agreed! Besides, Twitter and Facebook use RSS for many of their supporting functions.  And it's nice that everyone posts to Twitter and Facebook, but I still rather read my content in Google Reader - much easier and faster to scan what's available.

For the same reasons COBOL lives on, a superior technology will not be enough to displace the millions dollars and millions of hours already invested in the RSS infrastructure.  New (better) technologies will likely simply provide ideas which will be incorporated into RSS as extensions/enhancements.  This approach offers much lower adoption friction than starting from scratch with something new--even if that something is better.  (Just ask the folks that used to make Beta recording tapes if that technology was better than VHS ;-)

I'm with you Andy,  I think RSS is going to be with us for a long time.  The critics of RSS are the same people who told us EDI would be replaced by web tools...

Neither Twitter or Facebook offer a superior open protocol for web data exchange.  Even if individuals knowingly use Facebook or Twitter more than RSS, the sites they visit and even the social media applications they use will continue to depend on RSS for content syndication.

Two of the fastest growing social media tools are Ping.FM and HelloTXT.com.  One of the most popular features of these social media update and syndication tools is their ability to to publish social media updates driven by RSS feeds.

My personal feeling is the only way for those of us who wish to build real people type relationships/networks is to break from a particular day for starters. Hopefully you then dilute the 'spamation' (goodness is that a word!) over 7 days.

Interestingly I defended the hashtag length here http://isemann.posterous.com/the-worthfollowing-twitter-hashtag-defending.

Steve Woodruff and I have been lobbying for a more useful FollowFriday protocol; the #ff2 tag is a good step in that direction.

See:
http://faseidl.com/public/item/231723

I like the short #ff2 becasue it take up very few of those precious 140 character slots.

.. invent a new hashtag for it. My personal favourite is #worthfollowing.

Other options and why #worthfollowing is the

best option can be found on my blog at http://isemann.posterous.com

R!