When Robert Scoble urged Microsoft to acquire Newsgator in an article in WebProNews it caught our attention. Craig Barnes took the opportunity to set the record straight and to invite Scoble to take a closer look at our work building a new "attention based infrastructure company" that is a lot more than another RSS reader for Outlook.

Based on Scoble's follow-up post - Attensa DOES have RSS Synchro API - it looks like we are starting to get through and we hope Robert takes us up on our open invitation to share more about our technology and strategy with him.

Ever since Microsoft previewed Outlook 12 at Syndicate there has been a meme on the imminent death of Newsgator and Attensa. Before people start writing more obituaries we're declaring "We're not dead yet. In fact, we're feeling much better."

Here's why...

1) Ubiquitous RSS is good. At Attensa we believe that pervasive use of RSS benefits everybody and that makes our technology more valuable. Who better than Microsoft (and Google and Yahoo) to educate and make available basic RSS capabilities? Attensa is about value-add, not the inevitably commoditized RSS reader. We, and our investors (announcement coming soon), are betting that over the next several years Microsoft will do the heavy lifting and educate the masses of the benefits of adopting RSS.

2) But RSS is dumb. Already users are subscribing to dozens of feeds and receiving hundreds of posts per day. And it is only going to get worse as marketers utilize RSS in lieu of traditional internet media. Further, the enterprise and enterprise application vendors are embracing RSS for every conceivable task. As RSS users (whether through Outlook 12 or the common RSS reader) we will soon all be drinking from the proverbial fire hose. The problem will dwarf email inbox overload. At Attensa think there is a big opportunity for smart RSS that cuts through information overload.

3) With RSS "less is more" At Attensa our business and technology focus is improving the RSS experience through real-time attention stream analytics - the fact that we have or will soon have best of class solutions for Outlook, Mobile, Online and more is almost incidental. Long term (i.e. once Outlook 13 or 14 finally gets it right) our attention stream infrastructure will sit quietly, behind the scenes, making the defacto standard RSS reader simply "work better."

4) Outlook 12 adoption happens when? In the meantime, and surveying the competitive climate for readers and pondering the en mass adoption of Outlook 12 in the enterprise (early 2008?) we think there is considerable opportunity to provide quality RSS experience for users of Outlook 2000 and later for the foreseeable future. As for Outlook 12, I think most would agree without even seeing it that there will be considerable opportunity to make it better.

Hey mister that's me up on the Podcast.

David Berlind and I had a chance to talk at Syndicate about Attensa and our development plans. You can listen to the podcast here. If I had a dollar for everytime I used the word "information" I could take the winter off.

Based on this quote from his write-up, apparently he liked what he saw and heard...

"Now that I've had a chance to see Attensa's solution in action (here at the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco), I can understand why John Palfrey's RSS Investors venture capital outfit selected the company as one of its initial investments  (valued at $9 million)."

He gives a great perspective on the similarities and differences between Attensa and Newsgator.

As we continue the development of an RSS network based on attention streams to intelligently improve the relevance of information for everyone using RSS, our mantra is Less is more.

Brain power and energy are being devoted to the development of the Attention.xml spec through Dave Sifry and the brain trust at Technorati. We think it is just as important to start bringing consumers and businesses into the loop on how RSS and attention can deliver on the Less is More promise. Even the passionate and eloquent voice of Steve Gillmor can't don't it alone.

Craig Barnes, our CEO, has issued a call to action to establish an industry initiative to evangelize the inherent benefits of artfully using attention data to drive RSS to the next level.

If you or your company want to join us in this noble effort, send me an email.