Jon Udell has an imaginary conversation between himself and Mr. Safe to explain all the ongoing developments in the RSS world (the effort to try and come up with an alternative to it called Echo). Udell makes a few compelling points about RSS, which is what I “echo”:
The magic is in knowing how to use RSS. Knowing what to read and write, and how, and when. Absorbing and transmitting awareness.
It’s not about the format, and it’s not about the tools. It’s about a new way of communicating, one that’s defined by personal publishing and subscribing, and that empowers writers and readers as never before.
It’s true that vast numbers of yet-to-be-written RSS applications need no more than what RSS already does, or can be extended to do using the mechanisms it sanctions. It’s also true that vast numbers of yet-to-be-written RSS applications will require RSS to evolve.
RSS is the real revolution – I’ve been saying it for some time. There’s a lot that can be done with it around the publish-subscribe concept without the need for any change. The change is required not in the standard, but in how we think about it. The need is to shift the focus from blogs to RSS.
RSS+T
