Dave Winer invented RSS (Really Simple Syndication) ten years ago. You can’t really use the web and especially read blogs today without RSS. But there have been a structural flaw in the RSS specs. It was designed as a pull rather than a push service. When a post is published on a blog it sends a ping to let know different RSS client services to come and fetch the content, hence the delay. Recently there is up to 2-3 hours delay between a post being published and appearing in Feedburner for example (I actually don’t mind it gives me a little time to fix my typos and my terrible grammar). But real time syndication is very important to bloggers. RSS delay did damage to the time critical breaking news distributions and the real time conversation. This lead to all the chatter about Twitter being the new real time platform and the death of the RSS… Not so fast. Wordress.com just announced that it included RSSCloud format for all the blogs that they host. RSSCloud also created by Dave Winer is a push service that sends out post like emails to the special clients (there is currently only one client). More on Read Write Web.
Further Reading:
Why Michael Arrington is Critical of Apple
Comments – a Throwaway Expression of Approval and Opposition
Blogs – Public Remnants of a Dream
