If you’re a regular, you’ve probably seen my post about RSS right after Microsoft’s announcement of their new RSS campaign and native support for it on Windows Longhorn. You’ve also seen how I disagree with one specific point of Microsoft’s announcement and blogged about it (see this blog post).

Robert Scoble (Microsofts #1 blogger) assumed from that post of mine, that I’m part of the “crew who thinks Microsoft messed up”. This post is a clarification and collection of thoughts around this topic. Mainly, because I don’t think they “messed up”. I just think they’re doing one thing wrong on their proposal.

So to put it clearly, what Microsoft did right:

• They’re adventing RSS as a life changing technology, and it is.
• They’ve realized how important syndication is and explored it.
• They’ve realized RSS is about raw content that can be used in any application, and that their operating system needed to explore and enhance the experience of the “Subscribe”.
• They are making RSS the new trend on the household and office space, and everybody will benefit from that - even those who’re not using Microsoft platforms

On the other hand, there’s one thing in their announcement that I’m still sceptical about, and that’s their proposal for a way to order lists of items on RSS feeds. It is my personal belief that RSS should be data only, and that organization should be up to the RSS parser (which can be a website, an application, or anything else).

My opinion is fundamented by the fact that syndication is exactly that - extraction of content so it can be transmitted to other people without semantic information: so they can use it as they see fit. I see Microsoft’s proposal as somehow breaking that notion of simplicity by trying to bring order to what should be raw. Still, Phil Rignalda left a comment on my other blog post on this subject that raises some extremely interesting points that justify how the Microsoft proposal could be right in some cases.

So wrapping up, these are naturally opinions based on what was announced. I still am looking forward to seeing what Microsoft is doing with RSS, and hope to realize how wrong I was to think they were doing a bad move adding list semantics. I love to be proved wrong, particularly if its for the benefit of technology.