One story making the rounds in today’s tech news headlines is that Microsoft apparently has decided that the word “RSS” is not palatable to a consumer audience. In the current beta of the upcoming release of its popular browser, Internet Explorer (which includes feed functionality), Microsoft is referring to “webfeeds,” not “RSS.” (More on the Microsoft decision.)
Hmmmm…. “webfeeds.” Sound familiar?
Longtime Contentious readers may recall that last year I held a contest to find a less geeky, more descriptive and user-friendly nickname for the communication channel made possible by the RSS and Atom standards. The winning nickname (announced April 30, 2004) was – you guessed it – webfeeds.
Since then, I’ve noticed that the term webfeed has been steadily gaining traction. I guess someone at Microsoft noticed, too…
(Background: What’s a webfeed?)
True, webfeed is not yet nearly as popular as “RSS” – but then again, feed usage remains nowhere near as commonplace as it could/should be among internet users in general.
I’m not saying the name is the only barrier to widespread adoption. Thanks to various new tools and services, feeds are now much easier to use than they were in early 2004. But still, they’re just a little too geeky for the average nontechnical web user – in my humble opinion, of course.
In this TechWeb article yesterday, Antone Gonsalves said the shift to “webfeed” is “a sign that the acronym used to described technology for distributing content on the web is on its way out in the consumer market.”
Honestly, I don’t know whether he’s right. Microsoft has a checkered history regarding names and re-branding. As Gavin Clarke noted in The Register yesterday: “Famously, Microsoft re-named and ‘optimized’ its implementation of Sun Microsystems’ Java language, in a move that saw Sun prosecute Microsoft for breaking compatibility with Sun’s official Java specification.”
So we’ll see what happens. I find this all amusing, and frankly rather gratifying after the personal
derision, ridicule, and outright vitriol I received from the creators and early adopters of feeds simply for holding my little contest.
…And for those of you who dislike/distrust Microsoft, no, I didn’t “join the dark side.” If anything, the “dark side” joined me.
It’ll be interesting to watch this one.
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