Doc Searls: Markets are relationships.

Three words. But, it gets to why I'm so pro-RSS. RSS lets me build relationships with people, teams, and companies.

See, I want to have a relationship with the companies I buy stuff from (or support). I want that relationship to be deep. Lasting. Frequent. I want to know the people who work on the products I buy.

I wanna hear about the ugly, the bad, the good. It's why I search on "xyz sucks" when I'm thinking of buying "xyz" product. It's why when I'm considering hiring someone I search on their name to see what they've shared with the world. If they aren't in MSN Search or Google they get a "no hire" from me.

OK, maybe I'm weird for wanting to have a relationship with people, companies and product teams. But, I'm seeing a trend here. You can try to avoid the trend, but it still is there.

Here's my thesis: companies that have lots of bloggers will end up making better products, will end up having better marketing and PR, will end up making more profit at the end of the day, and will be more likely to have more than one "hit product" and will be more likely to last 100s of years.

Do you agree? Why or why not?

Steve Rubel: Microsoft Office marketing is stuck in the prehistoric era.

I don't know how many of you are reading my link blog, but last night I dropped on there a bunch of great stuff. This morning, reading through it, I realize one deserves an extra special link. Tim Bray linked to an animation of John Coltrane's Giant Steps song. I wish I were that talented.

And with that, I'm outta here until tonight.

Cameron just Skyped me and told me that the feed I want for the Podcast Network is here. He's also getting that feed added to the home page. Thanks Cameron!

There's a reason I wanted the feed: Mick and Cameron are doing some great stuff and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any of it. RSS is the way I won't miss a thing. I hate using my browsers.

Anu, over on my comments on the Hotmail post, says he's unsubscribing from reading my blog.

"Well, I think this will be my last comment, as I've decided to unsubscribe. Increasingly over the last 12 months, I'm finding this blog far less interesting: less objective and more partisan, and just more, well, Winer like. I've enjoyed, for the most part, reading it, but these days it just pisses me off more than it amuses me, or enlightens me [just like scripting.com]. So long, and thanks for some of the fish :)"

Hey, this is exactly why I love blogs. The reader is in control. If someone turns idiotic you can unsubscribe from them and never care again.

On the other hand, I subscribe to a lot of people who infuriate me. Why? Because that gets my creative juices going and makes sure that I don't have my own little echo chamber going on. It's so easy to start believing your own press releases. It's invaluable to have someone around to point out the weaknesses in your point of view.

To the point: Anu's right. I've become quite a jerk lately. Egotistical bahstard. Gotta fix all that and become a better person. On the other hand, another Microsoft team recently posted a marketing site without an RSS feed. What am I supposed to do? I guess I'm just supposed to smile and say "isn't that nice?"

Sigh. Instead I'm going to hang out with my son. He always tells me when I'm being a bahstard. 11-year-olds have such clarity of vision of how they want the world to be.

It's 1:24 a.m., so I might be missing it due to my bleary eyes, but I want to subscribe to the Podcast Network's RSS feed and I couldn't find that magical orange XML icon. I looked for "feed" or "subscribe" too, but couldn't find that either. Finally, I tried to autosubscribe with NewsGator's autosubscribe feature. It usually works if there's a feed somewhere. It didn't.

OK, Cameron and Mick, where is it? Or do I need to fire you?

How can you have a Podcast without an RSS feed?

Just saw this over on Dave Winer's site. Kevin Schofield, the guy who is responsible for moving technology out of Microsoft Research and into products at Microsoft, responds to Mark Lucovsky's "Microsoft can't ship" post.