Don’t Worry, Microsoft Will Wake Up and Smell the RSS

Over at Microsoft Monitor, Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox outlines why he feels Microsoft will forgo integrating RSS features into either Outlook Express or Internet Explorer anytime in the near future, even with Bill Gates touting the merits of blogging. However, Wilcox does say he believes the software giant will eventually build such capabilities into MSN.

Now Wilcox is a long-time revered Microsoft watcher. And you may say: well, who is little ol' Steve Rubel to disagree. But I do think that Joe is missing the bigger picture here. Microsoft will wake up and smell the RSS soon and it will move in a way that will significantly impact the blogosphere, the RSS-o-sphere, and eventually ripple into the "PR-o-sphere." Microsoft recognizes that its RSS opportunity lies not in creating new tools to read feeds (Yahoo cracked that code yesterday), but in simplifying how we publish information in feeds.

In typical Microsoft fashion, the software giant will again crash a hot, happening technology party fashionably late and then dominate it, just as it did in the Web browser and email/groupware markets. As I pen this post, I bet Microsoft is probably now cooking up all kinds of new software/ASP-based tools that will make it a snap for information workers and consumers to save and publish any information that needs to be continually updated in RSS format. This might include everything from recipes to press releases to calendars, contact info (watch out Plaxo!) and even family photos.

The race is quietly on to build the "killer app" for RSS publishing. You can bet that Microsoft, Yahoo!, Adobe, Macromedia and maybe even Google and Apple are all looking into this. Whichever company nails it will be in the catbird seat. In the next few years everyone and their grandmas will want to publish information in RSS.

So what does this mean for PR pros? More clutter. In the next few years as Microsoft and others race to establish the de-facto RSS publishing tool used by millions, the RSS-o-sphere – and thus by association the PR-o-sphere – will become a lot more noisy. Just read what Scoble wrote yesterday about the number of feeds he is reading and his concerns about how he will manage this load in the future.

The upshot is this: Microsoft is thinking about RSS, but it's thinking bigger than where the market is now. It's worried about simplifying publishing, not readers. Eventually, Microsoft and others will enter the RSS creation market. The good news is that it will become easier to publish feeds. The bad news is that may get harder for companies to stand out and be heard.