From Dave Winer this evening:
remarkable support from Microsoft. First, Halo 2 shipped with RSS 2.0
support. Who thought of RSS for games? It wasn’t even on our radar.
Then yesterday MSN Spaces, a blogging system, shipped with RSS 2.0
support. And the third bit was pinging weblogs.com. Now I’m sure
we’ll be able to turn the corner for two reasons. First, we got a huge
response from serious developers, and several credible projects started
today, in a variety of environments. Since eventually this will have to
be a distributed system, like DNS, it’s important to have a variety of
compatible implementations. Second, Andre and I did a back and forth on
this over a few hours. Andre used to be responsible for the kernel at
UserLand years ago, and now is back in the loop after the Frontier open
source release. He asked me some questions, I sent him the source, we
put in some diagnostics, tested a theory and boom, all of a sudden the
server is performing beautifully. We still have the scaling issue but
we got some breathing room today. Anyway, thanks to Microsoft for
trusting us and using our formats and protocols.
>
If anything this understates the case: as I said in my previous post,
support for RSS 2.0 is support for a simple, open platform for
creativity.
And support for RSS is consistent with what most of the major media companies are using.
Support for 2.0 is a most effective way for Microsoft to support the RSS
movement–the RSS ecosystem–because there is no entangling issue of a proprietary or new standard.
Of course, at the user level, at the experience level, and among the
user base, Microsoft will work to create stickiness and network
effects–but this is all at a higher layer than the RSS standard,
and enables others to play.
But the big news is that the Spaces service is easy to use, free, available around
the world in 17 languages, and has the stamp of approval of a big,
worldwide company. I think it’s introduction will greatly stimulate the expansion of the RSS ecosystem.
Do you remember when IBM opened hundreds of PC stores, and ran ads with
featuring Charlie Chaplin–and legitimized the PC? Do you
remember when AT&T offered free Internet service, and had millions
of takers almost overnight? Is Microsoft doing that for RSS and
blogging? I think so.
Large,
global companies have their limitations, but they are uniquely capable
of setting a large market on fire, if they really go for it.
Microsoft seems to be going for it. Burn baby burn!
And just to show you how huge this is, my brother in Wyoming just
started blogging yesterday, on the Microsoft Spaces platform. I didn’t
even know about it until he sent me an email telling me so..
My brother is a guy who loves fast horses and strong cars. For years he
trained race horses, and his girlfriend was a jockey. Speaking of thrills, here
is what he says about blogging in his first post…
He goes on to associate the experience with skiing, and to the thrill of slipping out to
the slopes for a few minutes during the work day..don’t tell…
Whooooeeeeeee! The sinful pleasure of Voice!
