Will MS force RSS standards?

It's an interesting question. At this point you have Atom going against several flavors of RSS. Right now there are no real killer apps that take advantage of syndication. Sure, blogs use it. But other than Yahoo, there isn't much point in the mainstream getting too excited about the controversy. Some standardization need to happen.

Rick Bruner, president, Executive Summary Consulting, agrees. "It comes down to what Microsoft does with it. Longhorn is expected to come with an RSS reader. At that point, it could go mainstream--it could become a viable ad medium then," Bruner says. --Mediapost