intertwingly

Niall Kennedy: Starting next week I will join Microsoft’s Windows Live division to create a new product team around syndication technologies such as RSS and Atom. I will help build a feed syndication platform leveraged by Microsoft products and developers all around the world. I am excited to construct a team and product from scratch focused on scalability and connecting syndication clients and their users wherever they may exist: desktop, mobile, media center, gaming console, widget, gadget, and more.

This has the possibility of being a Very Good Thing.  Job one is to shatter the cone of silence that has surrounded much of Microsoft’s participation in this space to date, and Niall seems to have every intent of doing exactly that:

I will continue to engage the community. There are some big challenges ahead for the entire syndication industry that are best solved by working together. There is a need for new shared metadata initiatives to describe rich media such as podcasts, videos and images. Some content publishers are holding back their content due to a lack of clear authorization and feed noindex options. The industry can gain a lot by having open dialogue and working groups around various issues in the space and I will continue to look outward for new ideas, partnerships, and best practices

It will also be interesting to see if his team will be building a second feed syndication platform from scratch, or if the intent is to simply throw away the current one.