Scoble penned a column for webpronews about this. Usually I keep quiet if other vendors are mentioned in the news, but since it stated "we have no API" I decided to write the legendary Microsoft blogger and part-time NG advocate directly. So I dropped Robert a private e-mail to inform him that we will soon release details of our API (with a simple subset that is compatible with NG's) and invited him to visit us an learn about what we are REALLY doing at Attensa. And, for the record, stringing together a bunch of disparate aggregation applications (or trying to duplicate them) is NOT what we are doing. In fact long term Attensa technology will likely be available for all of these apps (from NG or whomever) to help make them perform better through real time analytics...we are after all, an attention based infrastructure company.
In our view, perhaps we are miscalculating, market share doesn't mean much right now in the RSS reader world. It's too early. It's like when PageMaker 1.0 came out (it was $129 SRP by the way) and you needed an Apple LaserWriter to get B/W output out of it. Long story short we are still VERY left of the chasm - so to speak. As I have been preaching, we can't wait till Outlook 12 (and 13) and IE7 (and IE 8)make RSS ubiquitous so that our technology can benefit millions - not just the 50K to 100K early innovators. Oh yeah, Steve Jobs and co. won't sit still on this either so expect better RSS support from the Apple OS and their free Apps than whatever it is Vista/O12 will deliver (as usual.) Again, at Attensa, we can't wait.
Attensa has a deep and "attention-laden" API that we think developers and the enterprise will LOVE. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, whomever, hell even NG, we want to add value and make the experience as wonderful and as efficient as possible for the end user (aka "knowledge worker.") And, incidentally, there are hundreds of millions of these folks and they don't know or care about what happens left of the chasm. Don't get me wrong, it matters, just not that much just yet.
So, based on Microsoft's recent M&A history, I doubt it Robert. But, if so, that would be great for the Attensa technology foundation and its business strategy.
