Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

The XML Revolution

Author:Paul Snively
Posted:10/30/1999; 10:48:53 AM
Topic:The XML Revolution
Msg #:12552
Prev/Next:12551 / 12553

Dave Winer wrote:

Gartner: The XML Revolution for Commercial Publishing. They walk the W3C/Vignette party line. No mention of RSS, XML-RPC or SOAP. I plan to rebut this in my Seybold keynote in February. In the meantime, let's scour this report for things we agree with. Gartner influences how investors place their bets.

My sense is that the problem is the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of the Fortune 500 crowd: bigger is better. StoryServer powers enormous news presences on the Web (every time I see a URL that ends with a number with commas, I think: ah, a StoryServer site).

The thing investors seems to want to know about a company that wishes to go public is that it has the potential to grow to $100M in revenue. (Chalk this observation up again to Philip Greenspun.) When people inquire/complain about XML-RPC's "scalability," or Frontier's in general, it's kind of a code word: can I put Frontier and XML-RPC behind CNET? If not, then what exactly is your value proposition? As if the overwhelming majority of sites that are not Yahoo, AOL, CNET, etc. are irrelevant and therefore can't benefit from Frontier or XML-RPC.

I don't think it's possible to win by playing Gartner's game, by their rules, anymore than I think you can win by playing Microsoft's by theirs, or playing Apple's by theirs, or Sun's by theirs. Instead I think the question is how to reach that new sine qua non of the finance world, the "individual investor." If you couldn't ask me to talk to them, how would you reach my parents? In general, how would you reach all those people out there investing through schwab.com, e*trade, ameritrade.com? Interestingly, I think supporting RSS is the right thing: I think with your own channels getting out, the word will spread, and you'll be in an excellent grass-roots position for investment.

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