Atom vs. RSS: What’s the Fuss?

Anyone who uses or publishes RSS feeds has probably heard rumblings about a similar technology called Atom. Some techies are getting quite hot under the collar over this rift, actually.

What do content people need to know about this dispute? Not much. It’s mainly a question of dominance and accessibility. In order to make your feed accessible to the widest audience, you’ll want to publish it in the dominant format(s).

Here are the bare basics that content folk should be aware of…

Atom feeds just became a stronger contender in the media marketplace in part because Google (which bought the popular hosted weblog service Blogger last year) has made Atom feeds the default for Blogger weblogs. (Here’s a CNet article about that.) So Atom is one to watch.

But for the most part, the debate of Atom vs. RSS is mostly technical. Personally, I don’t think content professionals need more than a cursory awareness of it.

Ultimately, I think this whole battle points out that we probably need one generic term to refer to the concept of feeds – whether delivered by RSS, Atom, or carrier pigeon. Antone Roundy recently wrote a thoughtful short piece on this topic: “One name for talking about all formats.”

GOOD OVERVIEW: If you want to catch up on the Atom vs. RSS issue, check out the recent discussion Google Causes Blogger Uproar on WebProWorld. It touches on the basic issues and history of this dispute, without getting too technical. And for now, if you’re focused mainly on content, that’s probably all you need to know – in my opinion.

UPDATE MARCH 8, 2004: Dave Winer, one of the key architects and proponents of RSS, has proposed a merger of RSS and Atom. It will be interesting to see how this effort pans out.