This post is the first in a short series exploring my hypothesis of RSS as the technological foundation of Web 2.0 for my PhD research. I have had the honor of talking with Dave Winer about my research and to pose him some questions. I would like to thank him for his time, thoughts and provoking new ideas for my dissertation.

The terminology of RSS

Naming conventions of formats, protocols and standards by Microsoft and Netscape show how they perceive the web. When Microsoft named its Channel Definition Format (CDF) it illustrated how Microsoft thought of the web as a static thing that could be defined through and fixed in Channels. The <channel> element nomenclature by Netscape is still visible in the RSS protocol.

Netscape originally named its “channel description framework for their My Netscape Network (MNN) portal”¹ RDF Site Summary (RSS) reflecting similar ideas transposed onto the web as something that can be fixed and summarized. RDF was “Netscape’s way of thinking static.”² It was later renamed into Rich Site Summary (RSS) and included elements from Winer’s ScripingNews format but the new name still illustrated Netscape’s thinking about the web as a static thing. When Netscape dropped RSS support Dave Winer picked it up and renamed it into Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to name it into something that it actually was: The RSS protocol as “a way of detecting changes.”³

As I previously described in ‘The Perceived Freshness Fetish’ the web currently has a focus on fresh and updated content on websites. Changes were often manually indicated with “last updated” date displays or by placing the “new.gif” image next to the new or updated content. In 1995 Javascript was an important step in automating when a website was updated with for example the Last Modified Javascript:

<script language="JavaScript"> <!---//hide script from old browsers

document.write( "Last updated "+ document.lastModified );

//end hiding contents ---> </script>

The detection and notification of changes on websites to third parties was automated by RSS. It is a way to detect changes and as such RSS is not necessarily  reverse-chronological as we know from the blogosphere where changed and updated information is presented in a reverse-chronological order.

1. Dornfest, Rael, ‘XML.com: RSS: Lightweight Web Syndication’, XML.com, 2000 <http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/115> [accessed 23 April 2010].[↩]
2. Winer 22 April 2010[↩]
3. Winer 22 April 2010[↩]

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror – from The Book of Mozilla, 7:151 (type about:mozilla in the address bar)

Microsoft and Mozilla just released their new browsers: Internet Explorer 7 was released October 18 and Firefox 2 was on October 24. What can we expect?

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Samenvatting

Google is op dit moment de onbetwiste marktleider in zoekmachineland en deze positie lijkt onaantastbaar. De vraag is echter of dit wel zo is. Microsoft introduceerde onlangs zijn vernieuwde zoekmachine Live Search waarmee de aanval op de dominante positie van Google wordt ingezet. Deze strijd doet denken aan de browseroorlog uit de jaren negentig toen Microsoft met de introductie van Internet Explorer toenmalig marktleider Netscape binnen enkele jaren de markt uit drukte. De browseroorlog was een standaardisatie-oorlog die van Internet Explorer de standaard browser maakte. Dit paper zal argumenteren dat er wederom sprake is van een standaardisatie-oorlog, zowel opnieuw in de browsermarkt als in de zoekmachinemarkt. Tevens zal worden aangetoond dat de browser en de zoekmachine tegenwoordig zodanig geïntegreerd zijn dat de uitkomst van deze standaardisatie-oorlog grote gevolgen kan hebben voor de internetgebruiker. Door middel van een historische analyse van de eerste browseroorlog met betrekking tot de gebruikte concurrentietactieken zal getracht worden een beeld te schetsen van de mogelijke scenario’s van de huidige oorlog in de zoekmachinemarkt.

Google VS Microsoft. De strijd om de standaard in zoekmachineland