Here's what I think is essential for a corporate RSS reader:
1. It must support individual authentication in order to access secured feeds. Preferably using a digital certificate to identify the user. This rules out all browser-based aggregators
2. Most users will want to get started straight away and will not want to spend a long time managing their list of feeds. We need a way of managing centrally a user's OPML file and adding a feed for them if they request it.
3. We need the Read/Not Read status of the content to follow the user around, whether he is using his regular desktop machine, working from home on his laptop, or in an internet cafe using a server-based computing environment or a VPN.
4. The consumption of new content needs to be efficient. My aggregator supports Space Bar single-key reading. I just hammer away at the Space Bar until I find a post I'm interested in. This enables me to consume a large number of feeds in a short amount of time. We will be accused of creating an UNproductivity tool unless we can demonstrate this!
These things are pretty important for this technology to get accepted in the corporate environment. For my own benefits I would also like to see a feed aggregator that has the following feature:
5. Feeds are organised by tagging them, not by creating a hierarchical folder structure. Individual posts could also be tagged.
I have been asked for more specific information about our requirements for secure syndication. There are a couple of things we would like to do straight away.
I work for an investment bank, in the corporate finance division. We are not allowed to divulge information about the transactions we are working on to other employees of the bank, on pain of severe fines, damage to reputation, loss of license etc. We have to demonstrate that we are taking precautions to enforce these "chinese walls". Our customer relationship management system is updated daily with new information about the transations we are working on. I would like these regular updates to flow into people's news aggregators. BUT ONLY THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE ENTITLED TO SEE THAT INFORMATION SHOULD RECEIVE IT. We not only need to control the information flow, but been seen to be doing it in an auditable way.
The second application for this technology would be in publishing research reports for the bank's customers. Our highly-paid research analysts need to be sure that only the people who have paid for their reports actually receive them. This means we have to absolutely identify the person who is requesting the report. If we had a news aggregator that could supply a digital certificate then we could pump out the research reports using RSS or Atom over SSL to these customers. That would be cool.
Two contradictory thoughts.
If companies wish to disseminate commercial information using a syndication
protocol then they need a news aggregator that can supply authentication
credentials to the server. Some already can, but, depending on their
compatibility with the authentication methods available on the server, it is
possible they will be transmitting usernames and passwords unencrypted over
the internet. This is clearly a Bad Thing. If Digest Authentication were
reliably available then this would mitigate the problem. This would be an
appropriate solution for a company wishing to set up a public, but paid-for,
service.
For the type of information my company wants to disseminate, we would prefer
to issue our customers with a digital certificate. I am not enough of a
security guru to comment on the relative merits of this technology compared
to username/password, but I know it is the norm in my industry (financial
services) to operate like this.
Here (at last) is my point: the first news aggregator to offer digital
certificate authentication is in a unique position. Not only is it likely to
be widely adopted in the financial services industry, to the complete
exclusion of its competitors, but it will also generate a good deal of
publicity among some very influential consumers, for syndication
technologies in general. Blogging will have grown up all of a sudden.
What is the downside? Well although financial services is a large and
influential industry, it isn't mass market. If, as a news aggregator product
owner, your business model is to make $0.02 from everybody on the planet
then it's probably not worth building this. On the other hand you would like
to sell to an industry that doesn't mind paying top dollar for the right
technology then go right ahead and add this feature.