Microsoft Announces FeedSync But Its Strategy Remains Un-Sync'd (Collaborative Thinking)

Personally, I find this very confusing. Microsoft has not articulated any coherent vision on feeds in general so my initial reaction is that this announcement strikes me as somewhat of a "one off". FeedSync (the evolution of Simple Sharing Extensions, or SSE), tries to solve more advanced problems that are outside mainstream adoption of XML feeds within enterprises right now. It also leaves Microsoft clients without a clear framework for how XML feeds and feed syndication comes together for those investing in the Microsoft platform. What I do believe is that we need to move away from feed synchronization being left up to individual vendors - so there is a clear need for a community-effort to standardize in this area (as mentioned by Sam Snell of IBM at the bottom of a blog post of the FeedSync topic). There is also the broader challenge of data synchronization (where tools like Groove and Notes have advanced replication engines that are unfortunately locked up inside those respective products).

Perhaps someone will take this spec and run with it - creating some interesting and innovative applications that can better showcase its value. But I wish Microsoft would fix some of the more basic gaps and glaring holes in how it is approaching XML feeds and feed syndication in general. Right now, "the cart is before the horse" so to speak.

Initially, Microsoft delivered the Windows RSS Platform as part of IE7. IE7 included its own lightweight feed reader (which I actually like, it does what it is supposed to do and no more). Windows RSS Platform (which I also like), was positioned as common client-side infrastructure to provide consistent feed-related services for desktop applications (e.g., feed subscriptions, download, storage).

Then the Outlook team undercut that effort by implementing (essentially), its own version of Windows RSS Platform as part of Outlook 2007. That's bad enough - but the implementation is absolutely horrible when you use it for a large number of feeds (BTW, my machine literally dies when Outlook 2007 syncs and despite deleting feeds several times, they keep coming back - very frustrating, sorry I turned the feature on to tell you the truth).

Then, you had essentially a failed effort to build a hosted feed platform with Niall Kennedy coming on board and then leaving.

SharePoint exposes a lot of information via RSS feeds but apparently has no support for Atom - in fact, Microsoft seems to be very unclear on its support for Atom and perhaps might prefer to play with RSS extensions that muddy the waters given RSS is essentially an architectural dead-end. SharePoint is not a feed syndication platform - it's just another application that exposes feeds. This gap forced Microsoft to partner with NewsGator (i.e., Social Sites), but even that integration does not eliminate the need for enterprise IT organizations to look at what Attensa, KnowNow and NewsGator offer themselves as complete feed syndication platforms.

Surprisingly, IBM is also completely absent regarding a feed syndication platform. I find it amazing (in an underwhelming manner), that a company touting social computing (e.g., Lotus Connections) and "Info 2.0" has not articulated a strategic vision related to XML feeds outside a simplistic client implementation in Notes 8 and surfacing XML feeds in its related back-end products (e.g., Domino, QuickR, etc). For now - Attensa, KnowNow and NewsGator remain the only credible options with perhaps Oracle as perhaps the only large vendor that could make a move here.

Synchronization for the Web

The creation of FeedSync was catalyzed by the observation that RSS and Atom feeds were exploding on the web, and that by harnessing their inherent simplicity we might enable the creation of a “decentralized data bus” among the world’s web sites. Just like RSS and Atom, FeedSync feeds can be synchronized to any device or platform.

Previously known as Simple Sharing Extensions, FeedSync was originally designed by Ray Ozzie in 2005 and has been developed by Microsoft with input from the Web community. The initial specification, FeedSync for Atom and RSS, describes how to synchronize data through Atom and RSS feeds.

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Data synchronization is a key enabling feature for the software plus services world.

End users increasingly expect and want access to their data from servers, clients, and devices. They expect the data to always be up to date no matter where they access it, and users must never lose data in the process, or see duplicated items.

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Everyone has data that they want to share: contact lists, calendar entries, blog postings, and so on. This data must be up-to-date, real-time, across any of the programs, services, or devices you choose to use and share with.

Too often today data is “locked up” in proprietary applications and services or on various devices. As an open extension to RSS and Atom, FeedSync enables you to “unlock” your data—making it easy to synchronize the data you choose to any other authorized FeedSync-enabled service, computer, or mobile device. FeedSync enables many compelling scenarios:

Collaboration over the web using synchronized feeds

Roaming data to multiple client devices

Publishing reference data and updates in an open format that can be synchronized easily

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What does FeedSync add to RSS and Atom?

RSS and Atom were designed as notification mechanisms, to alert clients that some new resource is available on a server. This is a great fit for simple applications like blogging.

But those feed formats are not a natural fit for representing collections of resources that change, such as a contact list, or a collection of calendar items. Atom Publishing Protocol is designed for resource collections, but it is a client-server protocol and isn’t suitable (by itself) for multi-master scenarios. FeedSync extends RSS and Atom so that FeedSync-enabled RSS and Atom feeds can be used for reliable, efficient content replication and multi-master data synchronization.