Addicted to Digital Media – Microsoft launches RSS Directory When I had dinner with Microsoft exec Jim Allchin earlier this year, pehaps the most talked about topic at dinner was RSS. Several of the dinner particpants work in the RSS space including both Bob Wyman from PubSub and Adam Hertz from Technorati. At the dinner Jim made it clear that through Vista, Microsoft was intending to bring RSS to the masses.
Although most of the technological elilte these days have been entrenched in RSS and RSS readers for months if not years now, it still is something foreign to the average Joe on the street.
Sean Alexander is reporting that Microsoft has just launched a link directory to popular Microsoft RSS feeds. While this in and of itself is not terribly significant, in the context of the bigger RSS picture and the role that Microsoft sees RSS playing in Vista it represents a first step.
The directory page seems purposefully written in somewhat plain English and targeted towards the uninitiated. Also interesting to note is that Microsoft actually recommends several RSS readers from their site including NewsGator, SharpReader and FeedReader. Noticebly absent seems to be one of the most popular news readers out their Bloglines.
It will be interesting to watch the world of RSS and the efficiencies associated with it unfold as Microsoft tries to popularize it over the course of the next few years.