RSS:
The Best Of All Possible Worlds
The thing that most surprised me today in the SoftEdge panel on Social
Software was the reaction to RSS. I should be clear that I am an
RSS true believer. It seems to me that metadata as a byproduct of
social software engines (be it blogging or social networking or
whatever) is not only enviable, it is inevitable. RSS and FOAF and other
yet-to-be-determined social software data protocols will become
standards because it simply makes good sense for them to be
standardized. Anyone paying attention to the unbelievable
development and adoption curve of wireless can appreciate the
immense value driven by standards -- and, in particular, standards
that are truly standard. So it came as a bit of a shock to me that
when I questioned the panelists on the implications of RSS and the
Semantic Web, they were less sold on the inevitability of it
all.
When asked the question of whether the proliferation of RSS and
FOAF might make it possible for reader technology to be the next
killer application in knowledge management, I got very strong
reactions from both Reid Hoffman and Meg Hourihan. Reid stated that
he did not believe that RSS was sufficiently robust to provide
significant value an any level. Meg followed up with a general
indictment of the semantic web, which she views merely as a geek
utopia. I will admit that I'm a fan of Candide (particularly at the
hands of Bernstein),
but I hardly view myself as Panglos. One need look no further than,
for example, the tools that Oddpost has
incorporated into its web email client to allow an integrated email
and blog experience. Better yet, through a relatively simple web
service, Oddpost can deliver an RSS feed of a particular Google
News search so that you can keep track of keywords that are of
interest to you without having to visit Google repeatedly to find
out if your company or candidate or favorite band has been
mentioned in today's news. The same is true of watch lists on
Technorati.
Rather than periodically check to see if someone has linked to your
blog, Technorati will do the work for you and deliver the info to
your inbox only when there is information to be delivered. These
examples are just the tip of the iceberg but the demonstrate the
nascent power of RSS and related standards. I'll have to wait for
another panel to have that argument with Reid and Meg.