The Butt Ugly Weblog

RSS - slowly, surely, everywhere

RSS - Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you talk to) seems to be making new interesting conquests: First, Apple tells that the next version of Safari has a built-in RSS reader. Today, Mozilla Foundation releases Mozilla Firebird 1.0PR, which also includes a built-in RSS and Atom reader.

And through Kauppalehti, we learn that Ortikon Interactive has developed an RSS browser for digital TV. Now you can read many news sources and almost all weblogs in the world from the comfort of your own couch... Isn't the next logical application of this to combine this kind of a service with BitTorrent, and get something like Torrentocracy - and abolish TV channels completely?

This is by the way the reason why I think that Atom should be considered primarily as a content-delivery channel, and not a "standard for publishing weblogs". People know how bad I am at predicting, but my guess is that measured by volume, in two years most content transported through syndication standards (like RSS and Atom) will be non-weblog. While blogging is important, it cannot match the sheer volume of corporate-created content services. There's money to be made in syndication - go get it, folks!