ChiefTech: Why aren’t we getting enterprise RSS yet?

James Dellow over on his ChiefTech blog is talking about Enterprise RSS, and makes some good points regarding its slow adoption and an apparent lack of understanding:

for enterprise RSS to work you need both RSS content and RSS readers in place. From a technology point of view neither issue is difficult to overcome but we run into the old chicken and egg problem of supply and demand for RSS – It departments won’t invest in RSS if there is nothing to consume, and if there is no way of consuming then why create RSS content?

The other issue is that if you can overcome this first problem, then it would appear you don’t need a enterprise RSS system in place, however the problem I have is that I (and I think most knowledge workers) want an integrated RSS experience.

The chicken and egg situation is a big problem, putting the brakes on what should be relatively easy adoption of an enabling technology.

But I think there is also another aspect of this. RSS is raising its head as part of the conversations going on around social software adoption within the enterprise. This is not necessarily a bad thing, syndicated content is certainly key to these tools and their success. But why are RSS and ATOM not been given more attention outside this context, as part of more strategic thinking?

There is a lot more they can be used for than just blog feeds!

Link: ChiefTech: Why aren’t we getting enterprise RSS yet?

James, I tried posting this in a shorter version as a comment on your blog, but having problems, any ideas?

Tags: RSS, ATOM, enterprise2.0, socialsoftware