At Gnomedex last week, Microsoft representatives provided a peek at both Internet Explorer 7 and the new Longhorn operating system. It appears that Microsoft finally plans to embrace RSS or Really Simple Syndication. So why do you care? Simple: RSS is the mechanism that podcasts are syndicated and subscribed to. The enclosure tag in the RSS specification is what a podcaster uses to provide their audio program to subscribers.
Recently, Steve Jobs announced that iTunes would support podcasting, which really means that iTunes supports RSS. iTunes will become a "mega-directory" of podcasts as it will read the RSS feeds of podcasts around the globe. Microsoft isn't known for leading new techologies lately; instead, they are content to see which techologies are going mainstream and which are not. It's clear that RSS adoption is growing by leaps and bounds, both with podcasting and general web content. With the recent announcement of RSS adoption in the next versions of Microsoft's browser and music service, you have to wonder if podcasting in MSN Music is next.
1. I would assume so! And other than the itunes integration (which I find is just plain crap - and please, nobody tell me that "they are new in the game and did not know better"), I would expect MS to go directly for all mobile devices, especially mobile phones.
But for all podcasters out there, this mean watching their stats. Itunes has already brought some of the people heavy traffic up till closing the site - imagine what Yahoo and MS will bring. ;)
Other than that, I would expect MS to deliver a better integration than itunes. And to get more complient with standards and not reinvent the wheel (itunes tags as doubles from normal tags) or overwrite attributes set by the author (so far, we know they change the file name, and the title of a podcast) We will see.
Posted at 8:16AM on Jun 29th 2005 by Nicole Simon