What’s in a name?

Mike Torres spots a trend:

Would anyone like a lesson in how FUD spreads in the blogosphere?  Start here, then go here, here, here, and then finally here.  When you are finished, email me a list of the people (with URLs) complaining they "don’t like the name RSS and propose to change it to something better." 

Good luck.

A little background: Dave Winer has done much of the development work to bring the RSS format to its current state. He is a pioneer in the software industry. He deserves his own page on Wikipedia, and sure enough, he has one. Dave has a history of complaining, loudly and repeatedly, when others step into the field he claims is his own. He has carried on a running feud with Google and Blogger over their attempts to develop a new syndication format called Atom instead of using RSS 2.0. (You can read a balanced description here and a less balanced but much more entertaining account from Ben Hammersley here.)

In the first beta release of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft has added a Feeds button to the standard toolbar and a Web Feed Discovery Settings dialog box to configure how it works. As you can see from this screen shot, it doesn’t use the RSS brand anywhere.

Winer sees this as a slap in the face and a deliberate attempt by Microsoft (and Google) to co-opt the RSS brand. I can’t understand why Dave Winer continues tilting at this windmill. (This post in particular is really over the top.)

Personally, I think Web feeds (oh, and did you notice the lower-case “w” in the IE7 dialog box?) is a much more descriptive term than RSS. If I see that term on a Web page, I can probably suss out what it means, whereas if I see RSS I need to find an encyclopedia article to explain it. Scoble notes that non-techies seem to have adjusted to terms like CD and DVD (he doesn’t mention VHS or USB, although those would also be good examples). The difference? All of those terms were pushed by large corporations intent on establishing a brand so they could sell products. The CD came from Philips Electronics in partnership with Sony. DVDs came from the DVD Forum, which was founded by 10 very large corporations, most of them in the consumer electronics business. VHS is a JVC invention, and USB is another technology that comes from a consortium.

The important point here is that brand names get established because people want to sell stuff, and brands help them simplify the process of explaining what the stuff they’re trying to sell is for. If RSS is really a great brand, as Dave Winer insists, then it should be easy to find big organizations that will put their market weight behind that brand.

I’m currently using FeedDemon to subscribe to Web pages that offer their content in a compatible format. Would Dave insist that Nick Bradbury change its name to RSSDemon? This technology is still in its infancy. It’s not even a blip on the radar of the vast, vast majority of people on the Internet, much less on the planet. Insisting that RSS is the one true name for the technology is a little premature.

In another overwrought post, Winer speculates on what would happen if Microsoft tried to change the names of some companies that compete with it, like Yahoo and Google and Netscape. Huh? Please send a baggie of whatever you’re smoking my way, Dave. It must be really awesome.

Winer thinks this is a battle, and that Microsoft is trying to change the name of a feature because they want to screw him. (I’m not making this up. That’s really what he said.) News flash: Microsoft is in business to sell software. The reason some people at Microsoft are exploring alternatives to RSS is because people don’t understand the term. You put an RSS button on a Web page, and most ordinary people just slide right by it. I’ve been to Microsoft’s usability labs, where they test features like this. My guess is that they’ve been testing RSS features in the labs, and they’re trying to find the words that will help people understand and use this technology. Software developers who’ve seen their features go through usability testing usually get a big wake-up call from the experience. Dave, you should schedule a visit to the usability lab and see for yourself.