On Killing an Open Blogosphere

Scripting News: "Does it really matter how many formats there are?"

It matters to some, but I think it really misses the point. RSS 2.0 is a perfectly good syndication format for most purposes. Those that don't like it for whatever reason can choose RSS 1.0 or the "maybe-it'll-be-done-someday" ATOM format. Personally, like Dave, I'd prefer to see the world pick one format and use it. Unlike Dave, I don't care much which one it is (although I will admit a slight preference for some of the whizbang features that using RSS 2.0 gets you).

But like I said, this isn't the standards discussion that deserves the attention. Syndication formats, at this point, aren't likely to bite the blogosphere in the ass.

Publishing API's will.

Unless the development and user communities rally around a specific publishing format immediately, Google, Apple, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! will each adopt their own proprietary weblog publishing API.

Why is this certain? Because the current APIs suck. Try to use either of them to manage a photo-album, add a favorites list or update a personal profile.

You can't.

So not only will G/A/M/A/Y be tempted by the typical BigCo urge to do things there own way, their engineers will have a perfectly defensible excuse for doing so. Our stuff, the community stuff, just doesn't suit the needs of the commercial environment. Security? Hah!

This will have a devasting effect on the blogosphere. There are dozens of third party tools that work great with Blogware because of the de facto standards we've implemented. The instant that G/A/M/A/Y each implement their own proprietary publishing protocol, third party support on this scale will likely fall apart and independent developers like Tucows, Six Apart, Lionhardt, Qumana, Bloglines, Newzcrawler, Blogjet and so on will probably be unable to properly support their customers in the same manner they do today. Soon, we will be reading headlines like this one about AOL rejigging their blogging system to prevent Blogjet from talking to it.

Folks - lets fix this.

Please?