Windows Live focuses on Web Feeds
Posted in Marketing on: Wednesday, November 2, 2005 by Paul Boag
If I have told you once, I have told you a hundred times… get a web feed (RSS) on your website! Microsoft has just launched Windows Live, and at the heart of it lies the humble RSS feed.
Windows Live is a free, ad-supported AJAX virtual desktop. Features include (or will soon include), instant messaging, internet telephone calls, integrated email and you guessed it web feeds.
What is more Windows Live can be extended by the installation of "gadgets" that can be developed by pretty much anyone with the skills. It wouldn’t suprise me if the next thing you should be focusing on after adding an RSS feed to your site is the development of your own gadgets.
That means all the big players (Yahoo, Microsoft and Google) now provide virtual desktops built around delivering web feeds to peoples start pages. Combined with the live bookmarking function built into Firefox and the upcoming I.E. 7 makes an RSS feed as important as your newsletter email sign up form.
7 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
I hear the word “Portal” ringing in my ears……
Hi Paul, first of all, your podcasts are great! Just a question here: isn’t Windows Live pretty much the same thing as Google’s page: http://www.google.com/ig (which actually DOES work for Firefox! :) )
Take care!
From the web feeds point of view, yes they are pretty much the same. However, Windows Live has this gadget API which will allow all kinds of additional functionality to be added in like a built in email client and IM messenger.
The microsoftgadgets.com site seems to be the place to get started writing Gadgets.
Hi Paul,
what I like best is http://www.netvibes.com/
Mine is equipped with boagworld of cause ;-)
and works fine with Firefox
That’s the same one I use Astrid. However, mine isnt equipped with boagworld… he writes a load of boring old rubbish that I already know :)
Something else to consider for web feeds/rss feeds is “MSN Alerts”. MSN Alerts “are time-sensitive notification messages that service providers can send to customers at the customer’s request. Users can receive Microsoft Alerts on their desktop computers through MSN® or Microsoft Windows® Messenger, in e-mail, or on a mobile device, such as a phone or personal digital assistant (PDA).”
In other words: you can Sign up for MSN Alerts, get some code emailed to you a few days later and add that code to your site. When users click the button the code makes, they can sign up to get updates to your rss feed sent to them via MSN Messenger and the other places mentioned above.
Some users may like that as it means the update will come to them without even having to open an rss reader!