Yahoo RSS & Frothy Fan-Boy Behavior
I'm sorry, am I missing something? Yahoo adds an RSS reader to Yahoo Mail and people are acting as if Yahoo has created an implantable chip that mainlines RSS feeds into your brain. As I recall, Oddpost, the precursor to Yahoo Mail's current beta, had an RSS reader two years ago. And there are an awful lot of other RSS readers out there, many of which that are much more feature-rich than Yahoo's product.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with Yahoo’s RSS reader/folder — and it’s much better than Google’s broken stab at the area. But why people are engaging in such frothy fan-boy behavior is a complete baffler.
I have an idea. Why doesn’t someone call me when a prominent company decides not to support RSS — at this stage in the syndication market’s evolution that would be be something newsworthy. Because in 2005 RSS readers are a commodity, not front-page news.
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