RSS Wins, Signals Atom's Death Toll?

S. Housley writes " RSS appears to have conquered the last hurdle in becoming the industry syndication standard. Microsoft's inclusion of RSS into the newest version of Internet Explorer and reports that RSS will be in Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification. Even Atom's steadfast supporter Google, appears to have seen the light. Google had previously acquired Blogger, a popular blogging tool that uses the Atom specification to syndicate the contents of blogs created on the Blogger platform. In the past Google had strategically steered clear of endorsing the RSS specification hoping that Atom, would take hold. Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification. "

Comments

Article from a biased company

[bigwavejas]

RSS may have won the Atom/RSS battle, but for Feedforall.com to make such matter-of-fact statements such as,

"Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification."

...When they're a company that exclusively promotes the use of RSS, it seems a bit self-righteous; moreover, presumptuous that Google is simply writing off Atom.

Re:Article from a biased company

[His name cannot be s]

"When they're a company that exclusively promotes the use of RSS, it seems a bit self-righteous; moreover, presumptuous that Google is simply writing off Atom."

No kidding, given the rest of the facts:

Microsoft already stated that they would be using xml namespaces to add to RSS. Which is exactly what Dave Winer who published RSS 2.0 intended. Microsoft actually consulted Dave before getting very far too. Quote: "Anyway, there's a lot more to what they're doing, but I wanted to say in advance that I think what they're doing is cool. "

Additionally, Microsoft has stated support for Atom as well.

Heh.

Which RSS did Microsoft embrace?

[hta]

does anyone have real info on which version numbers of RSS (and according to whose spec) works with the Microsoft implementation?

Crack monkey

[LordMyren]

You crack rock smoking monkey, only like .5% of the web denziens actually use some form of syndication. Most people havent the foggiest idea what RSS even is. So, MS puts RSS into IE: suddenly RSS is going to overrun atom? Somehow I think not.

IMO, atom is a far better protocol. The creators obviously tried to integrate the protocol with existing XML standards, v. RSS which basically gets as far as tag>. Its far more clear about its payload and is way better suited towards XML delivery. But, decide for yourself.

I see no problem with the current duality. I do wish Atom were available more places, but I can still live with RSS where I need to.

Myren

Formats don't die

[mveloso]

Old formats don't die, they just go into maintenance mode.

Saying one format or another has won is always premature. The only time it's safe to say that a format is dead is when they have to build new equipment to read it because the hardware is missing. And even then you never know.

This article is obviously biased. It's like when Netscape said "the desktop is dead" when the Java plugin was first released.

Captain Obvious

[Red Flayer]

Breaking news, RSS is favored by industry giants! Use RSS, support for Atom is disappearing!

Oh, and by the way, we happen to produce software to manage your RSS needs!

"Now that Atom's attempt at replacing RSS has fallen flat, the syndication arena will likely see significant innovation and progress."

Yes, that's what competition does, it stifles innovation.

Seriously, though, uniform standards can be great, saving dev time for loads of people and companies.

But I'd say that, at the very least, this promotional material (that's what it is) is putting the cart before the horse, and is also poorly written. I'd like to read a detailed analysis by an industry expert (not a marketing department), who is qualified to project market share for the standards.

Also: Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification.

Actually, this appears to be an acknowledgement that (1) Google would like as many consumers as possible to use Google News and (2) Google is choosing not to use their market share to lock out competitors in related products.

Re:Who Cares?

[metamatic]

Well, developers care, because the RSS specs (all nine different ones) are a mess, whereas Atom is quite carefully specified. RSS has the same problems as "Netscape HTML", whereas Atom is more like XHTML.

Bias

[slapout]

RSS will be in Longhorn

Yeah, because there's absolutely no possibilty that someone will write a program for Longhorn(Vista) that will support Atom.

Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification

I guess because Microsoft declares something, that's it. Everyone else should just pack up and go home. (Someone should be sure to tell those Firefox people that Firefox isn't going to be on the Vista install CD!)

I don't have a dog in this fight, but this story seems to have a bias.

Atom is more than a feed format

[joeykiller]

It's worth noting that Atom is more than RSS is, in that it is also a push/publication format. You can use Atom to post to your blog; you can use it to upload pictures and files, delete postings, etc. It's quite possible that the two formats could continue to co-exists peacefully, merely because they fill different functions.

Re:Atom's Death Toll

[squidfood]

To sum up:

When a bell tolls a death knell
Each knell's for one body
The death toll is the sum of knells
But only one's for thee.

Re:Who cares, they both suck.

[CRCulver]

Datetime representation

You've never heard of ISO 8601?

encoding confusion

XML is UTF-8 by default unless another encoding is explicitly given in the first line.

verbosity and wasted bandwith

HTTP is compressed by default. XML, being so redundant with all of its angle brackets, quotes, and equals signs, compresses very well indeed.

AtomAPI

[Trejkaz]

So... can I post to my weblog using RSS yet? Clearly they must have tackled this problem if they're going up against Atom.