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. "

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.

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 [tbray.org].

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

Much ado about nothing

[winkydink]

As you point out, only a tiny percentage of users actually use some form of syndication. Doesn't this really boil down to, "who cares?"

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:Article from a biased company

[Anonymous Coward]

Sharon's name is linked to notepage.net, feedforall.com is owned by notepage, and her opinions on RSS and Atom are on the feedforall.com site. I smell a lotta self promotion going on. How much you wanna bet there'll be lots of bragging about how they got /.ed?

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.

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 [wikipedia.org] intended. Microsoft actually consulted Dave before getting very far too. Quote: [reallysimp...cation.com] "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. [msdn.com]

Heh.

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.
 

Re:Article from a biased company

[hritcu]

You guys sound like Vista is going to ship sometime soon. I wonder if they will make it in 2006? 2007? Or MS fains will have to wait till 2008 to be able to run the newest and coolest windows. With MS-RSS support, of course.

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.

What a troll

[Lac]

The submitter seems to think that Google bought Blogger because it uses Atom for feeds. Clue: I bet its market share was more of a selling point. Additional clue: adding rss feeds to blogger is probably (a) easy and (b) completely non-controversial to anyone remotely sane.

Re:FUD, FUD, and more FUD

[pokka]

So, is anyone from slashdot going to correct this story?

This was pure spam, published to sway public opinion in the Atom vs RSS debate, and despite the fact that they've been called out in the comments, their plan is going to work unless slashdot removes the story or substantially edits it to point out the fraud. It will appear in countless syndicated news feeds (in RSS or Atom, ha), in blogs referencing the post (by people who didn't read the comments and were therefore fooled). Google searches about Atom will bring up this story, etc.

I've seen countless fake stories posted to Slashdot, and they get the same (non-)treatment. Slashdot should really do a better job of filtering this stuff out *before* it's published, because - whether they realize it or not - it actually causes a lot of damage to the public's knowledge and understanding of technology. And it *is* partly Slashdot's fault, because it would take no longer than five minutes per story to verify that it is fundamentally valid (and maybe an extra five minutes to spell-check and remove sensationalistic text).

Re:Information on the Author/Submitter.

[AVIDJockey]

She, or others associated with feedforall.com, have a history of posting articles like this one [slashdot.org] that indirectly shill their services.

Re:Here's why RSS won

[WombatControl]

Let's assume RSS "won" something. (Which in itself is baloney - Atom is still very much around and well-supported.)

Which RSS "won"? RSS 2.0? RSS 1.0? RSS 0.91? Any of the 9 different incompatible versions of RSS?

There's a reason why non-XML formats like JSON-RPC and RSS3.0 never caught on - it's because they're not based on XML. XML, for all its shortcomings, is supported by damn near everything under the sun. You can query it with XPath, transform it back into XHTML with XSTL, slice it, dice it, and turn it into delicious Julienne fries. XML is the information interchange format right now, and that's why formats that aren't based off of valid XML schemas are pretty much doomed to failure.

Atom has the backing of the IETF. Every toolkit on the planet supports Atom - as will Vista. RSS won't be going away, but saying one format or another will "win" is assuming that this is a zero-sum game when it really isn't.

The real battle was between XML formats and non-XML formats, and the non-XML formats like Netscape's old versions of RDF died out a long time ago.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

Re:Atom's Death Toll

[Tim C]

The phrase death toll [cambridge.org] has a single, well-defined meaning. It does not mean the same as death knell, no matter that the individual word toll, in the context of bells, means the same as knell, in the same context.

For what it's worth (ie nothing), I've never heard the phrase "funeral toll" :)

Re:Atom's Death Toll

[klept]

Jesus, who cares?

Re:Article from a biased company

[mccoma]

The sad part is it is probably correct to repeat RSS multiple times.