Today, rssCloud was enabled on millions of WordPress.com blogs. And now aggregators and pingable hubs will follow to add support. This is perfect because now their is no risk that rssCloud will be ignored and forgotten except for a select group of adopters. I knew that Dave Winer would carry this project and forge it ahead. I’m glad that it won’t be overshadowed by the other cool protocol backed by Google (PubSubHubBub). Likewise, I want other protocols to get proper attention and adoption moving forward (OpenMicroBlogging, Fethr/Gossip etc.).
No wars here. It’s all good. If the Open Web benefits, then everyone wins. Well, except for those who want to control the Massive Rapid Data moving in the cloud. That is to say… they won’t benefit unless they choose to benefit. And they can and they should. And they will?
I’m glad that i’ve supported rssCloud since earlier this summer (http://nudg.es) when Dave Winer started to reboot the concept, especially after PubSubHubBub came about. It inspired me to take a close historical look at the origins of RSS and related technologies. I’ve used RSS since it’s inception and more so back in 2004 when I helped to launch ourmedia.org which had deep emphasis on RSS for video and audio blogs and making use of the enclosure element (podcasting). We early adopted the new Media RSS spec that was lead by Yahoo to provide more enhanced feeds. And the videoblogging movement really latched onto the concept of RSS and I was at the heart of those pioneering days. So RSS is very familiar and very awesome. I love it.
In the past year+ I have been very interested in the topic of Scaling Twitter. It was the result of Twitter’s technical problems that Open MicroBlogging became a focus of technologists/developers/students. An OpenMicroBlogging protocol was introduced and a twitter clone built on that protocol was launched (identi.ca/status.net). Other proposed protocols and ideas started sprouting as students and professionals weighed in.
Point being… The incredible growth of Twitter put much needed focus back on balancing data control. By that I mean…. Not putting all our eggs in one basket. Not having centralized services at the heart of the web. Not getting drunk on the hype of these new social net brands and their features. Getting back to basics, and back to our blogs. Dusting off some old tech and upgrading the de-centralized web. Speeding up RSS with rssCloud is an important step in this direction.
It’s great that we have our Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. But the Open Web needs to evolve too and cannot be mostly dismissed by a small group of Tech Giants who re-invent the wheel, disgard standards and limit their open data policies. Their services are ours to leverage, not to sell our souls to. Obviously, this speaks more to content creators than it does to those who are primarily content consumers. But it benefits everyone. Because at any point, someone can decide to become a more serious content creator, setup a website and a blog and off you go. To have a strong and stable Open Web to go to that competes and coexists with any proprietary offerings with terms & conditions is critical.
So what’s so important about The Real-Time Web? That’s another blog post. But the quick reply is… If you like getting Email in timely manner, then you will like The Real-Time Web.
Here are some of today’s blog posts on the news of rssCloud + WordPress.com integration:
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/09/07/teaseTeaseTease.html
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/09/07/anyWordpressBlogCanBeCloud.html
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/rss-in-the-clouds/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wordpress_just_made_millions_of_blogs_real-time_wi.php
http://blog.lazyfeed.com/2009/09/lazyfeed-will-integrate-rsscloud-and.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/wordpress-enables-rsscloud-in-post-feeds/
http://mashable.com/2009/09/07/rsscloud/
Oh and maybe you’de be curious to know how I found out about todays news?
I actually had hopped into the FIRST rssCLoud enabled aggregator/publisher that was not properly mentioned in any of the above posts 
The service I speak of is at http://MyStatusCloud.com and is being developed by Jeremy Felt (@jeremyfelt). His blog is at http://www.educer.org/2009/09/07/its-all-happening/.
He has been in 5th gear playing around with the concept of rssCloud and I think he has done a great job implementing it. Take a look and try it out yourself!
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