I'd like to thank Scott for the new features in .Text, some very cool things in there. Thanks.

I can understand the grouping thing of MS/Non-Ms employees, but I don't necessarily agree with it. This feature allows people to read only the MS feeds, thus missing lots of independent feeds(unless they subscribe to them exclusively). In short, it does to RSS what cable TV did to public broadcast; narrower views for a more focused target audience. 

On the bright side this will provide a sort of "competition" mechanism. I'm guessing that by now, as a non ms blogger I've enjoyed a huge visibility scale without really needing to post anything good to be viewed. The main feed allowed me to "stand on the shoulders of others" and project my views onto the world and hey, if you didn't like it, it was your problem, right? But now it's different. Now I'll have to work harder to get the readability that I'm "used to". Meaning I'll be thinking more in terms of content that I provide because I'll know that there is an alternative that is probably very good. In a matter of speaking, the non- ms bloggers here will become the "under dog" and will have to fight to get the "recognition" (read "agg views") they think they deserve. so yeah, it's good. In a way.

It's also bad in a way. Narrower views also mean less information and more "zipping around". It's also bad because .netWeblogs is not what it started out as: a true independent community blog site. It is now in the shadow of big brother(that does not mean evil brother!) and everything is read in a different context than is was before. And for that I feel sad. The main feed has been growing slowly into a bit of a monster and the noise levels are getting very high. The main thing I fear is that people who still want a "main feed" they can subscribe to with less noise will simply subscribe to the ms bloggers feed and leave the rest out, which would in fact turn this blog site into something completely different. It will be turned into MsDotNetWeblogs.com.

So, these are my views on the subject, but that's probably the last I'll say on this. I'm happy to blog here and will continue to do so until I feel differently.