Expanding the capabilities of RSS

It seems RSS is beginning to build some momentum. MarketingVox cited this article on CNET this morning discussing Microsoft's plans to expand the capabilities of RSS. The main fact in the article is that Microsoft wants RSS to be able to list content in other ways than just creation date:

Microsoft is proposing a way to add ordering information so that an RSS feed could better handle things like an e-commerce site's list of best-selling items or calendar information ordered by the date of an event rather than when the appointment was created.

This seems like it would be great for campaign websites - if you could subscribe to a site, and have it list information by topic which is then updated regularly, or could have the campaign itinerary listed in date order, this could make RSS far superior to email as a publication mechanism.

However, as some people have pointed out in class, RSS is still a fairly niche technology. But the article also states that the next version of IE will 'fully support' RSS, with an entire team dedicated to ensuring it is delivered. Microsoft have a habit of taking a while to get these things right, but when they do they deliver, it tends to move that functionality into every day use.

The RSS support in Firefox is already excellent, especially with add-ons like Sage (see earlier posts). However, since IE has 90% of the market, it will need Microsoft to be fully supporting RSS before it can really become mainstream I suspect. Once it does, I can see a major push to get people using RSS feeds over email updates for campaigns.