So what’s the real difference between Atom and RSS? Henry Story of BabelFish fame turned me on to this nice little resource: RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 compared. IBM has another good overview as well.

Arguably, RSS 2.0 is a simpler spec. As such, it will likely gain a following for a long time. It is tried, and reasonably true. Provided, of course, the proprietary forks by everybody from Microsoft to Jonathan Avidan don’t completely derail large-scale adoption.

Atom 1.0 is still relatively unknown, even among fans of RSS. And it is arguably more complex than RSS. (As Charles Miller said recently in an email, “The result was always going to have that designed-by-committee feel, mostly because that’s how it was designed.”) The adoption cycle may never really ramp up enough to make it a force in the marketplace.

However, some of the thought put into Atom, including direction on the application of XML Encryption and XML Digital Signature, make it fairly compelling in more robust business environments. As syndication moves more into corporate firewalls, the ability to sign and secure all or even just portions of a feed is very important.

It is also interesting to note that Atom 1.0 also includes support for enclosures, i.e. podcasting. This feature was added in Atom 0.8 and put to rest a significant source of debate over the viability of the specification.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2005 at 00:15 and is filed under syndication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.