I was thinking tonight about how many times I see something from my RSS feeds retweeted (and retweeted, and retweeted) on twitter these days. A few months ago I would have told anyone that I’d take twitter over my RSS reader because I felt that if something was important, the people I’m following on twitter would definitely be talking about it and so I’d be ok with not seeing it in RSS.

I have started to feel differently about this.

Twitter is absolutely still a place where I get a lot of information and I do still consider it to be a huge source of personal professional development. That being said, the conversation is the important part to me – not the retweeting of information that I can get in my RSS reader. If I’m following you on twitter, it’s because I like you. I like learning about you, I like seeing those personal insights. I love knowing the little, mundane things about you. It’s a personal connection and it’s what puts the ’social’ in social media.

It seems to me (and granted, this might just be the people I’m following) that more and more people on twitter spend more time now just retweeting things from Wired or Mashable or whateverothertechblog here and not actually creating conversation or sharing anything personal. Keep in mind that if I’m following people on twitter that are working with social media, I’m likely already subscribed to blogs like Mashable, Wired, TechCrunch, etc. A few months or a year ago, I would have just set up an RSS twitter feed for someone that constantly posted links because although they didn’t use twitter to converse, I still wanted to get the information but now, I’m already *getting* the information that they’re putting out there.

I think that most of us have a lot going on in our lives and more and more to keep up with every day. If someone or something isn’t making my life easier or my job easier, then it’s really worth considering if I need that thing at all. Right now, I don’t need an echo of information or more noise in my stream so I’m rethinking connections.

Just came across this post on ReadWriteWeb that references a study that will appear in New Scientist Magazine that has found that things like blogs, instant messaging and social media sites are better than traditional media in times of emergency because they connect people and provide warnings in real-time.

It’s a really great post and definitely worth reading. I love that they’ve used real examples of how all of these sites and tools have really been useful recently. They’ve also shown the real value of using these things in emergency situations.

I wonder.. with the proliferation of blogs, twitterers and people using these tools, if at some point “traditional” media will disappear. It seems, at least for myself, that more and more I’m tired of the ‘drama’ that old-school media brings to the table and I just want to get the quick, honest assessment from a ‘real’ person on the front lines.