Syndication Showdown
I added an Atom feed to this site to support and fully understand the emerging format, but didn’t expect many people to use it. After all, RSS is better-known generally and on this site its auto-discovery tag and link (in glorious ‘XML orange’) appear first.
Currently on Bloglines, RSS outnumbers Atom by 2 to 1 for subscribers to this site; not a bad ratio for the newer, less prominent option. As Atom nears maturity as a standard it’ll be interesting to see if users gradually recognise the ‘brand’ and actively choose it more often (formats should ideally disappear into the background as subscribing becomes more user-friendly; am I merely perpetuating problems by featuring two formats? The vague plan is to make Atom the more prominent one once it’s ratified as a stable standard, eventually leading to a single visible feed link).
(SimpleBits has now opted for a single feed to avoid confusion; I’ve got an alternative approach in mind which I might try out soon)
Thu 21st Apr 2005, 10:32pm GMT (updated Mon 25th Apr 2005, 8:28pm GMT)
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