So, like any exec who monitors competition and the category in general (using RSS of course), over the past several days a lot of hay has been made over the syncing of RSS to Microsoft's common feed store. My thoughts are, it's useful, but it's just not a big deal.
Attensa has had this capability for some time now, since IE7 beta 2. And the only reason it took that long is because we were waiting on the C++ APIs from Microsoft to enable it. NewsGator and others use the .net APIs and too many of our customers don't want (or flat out won't allow) the overhead that uses the .net framework on the desktop.
This bring me to another point, we've had fully functional IE and Firefox toolbars (windows) for some time too. Also, no .net, they're small and fast, and are just another thin interface that accesses our engine. You can read fully sync'd posts from the toolbar without any other clients installed if you want too. It is also probably the simplest interface and quickest means available for creating and viewing del.icio.us tags. Lastly, the autodiscovery is best of class too...finding all of the RSS feeds on a given page vs. just one.
Feed store sync is a simple, obvious feature, not a product, and I am genuinely happy for NG users that they have this now too. Outlook users that give NG and Attensa the Pepsi challenge will find other decisions obvious too - and not just because the new Attensa for Outlook is free.
