A word or two about Exchange PSS hold times...

Scoble asks the question. Feel free to answer in his comments, or here and I'll pass it on. My view? Microsoft needs to evaluate and push this on three fronts. This is, of course, assuming that Microsoft sees RSS as valuable. I'll leave the risk management and technology assessment to people who are smarter than I am. Evangelize The first step is to prove first that it's worth it, and second that it solves a problem. To be honest, I would start by making the Community Groups for Microsoft products available as RSS feeds. The notification system in these groups is either non-existant or useless (I've never been notified, even after checking the little box). One of the biggest things that RSS does is improve communication, so let's see it improve communication. Microsoft may even want to extend on that Exchange Developer who asked for patience through his blog. Why not offer support status updates via RSS? In fact, why not provide 360 degree communication to key customers. They can know the support status on the project, they can know the status of their question and they can know when an answer is given. All powered by RSS? Chris Pirillo would be happy. He's been on a bit of a "RSS can replace Email" thing. I digress. For MS to effectively push RSS, it needs to first show that it works for them. By solving internal issues (like communication), not only will the Product Evangelists be able to say it works, but bloggers will as well. MS will have several proof of concepts built up, and maybe even distribute those to customers under licensing (or God forbid, Open Source) agreements. Resource Whoops, got caught up in the moment. In order to effectively get customers, but more specifically ISV's to pick up RSS, Microsoft needs to provide resources. Believe it or not, Microsoft is already incredibly good at this. There are an incredible amount of small tools out there that solve problems companies don't even know they had. From Software Update Services to the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. By providing a resource, ISV's and customers alike will be able to take advantage of this new tool. Build It While a lot of the buzz recently has been around building the functionality into the OS, I'm hopeful that Microsoft has learned some lessons from previous "big technologies" that were built into the OS and then dropped. Following this 3-phased approach allows them to see if RSS actually solves a real problem that real people are having. If it flies (or bounces, or sticks... however you choose to put it), they can then build functionality into the OS. Into Outlook. Into Office. Into Exchange. Whatever. Make it part of Sharepoint for all I care. Not sure if this helps Robert Scoble, but these are my 8am thoughts....