NewsGator's CTO Greg Reinacker's comments about RSS security make good reading. We need to ground ourselves in the understanding that RSS uses HTTP for a transport and we have many existing methods to secure this channel already. However, I think Greg is missing a key business value here. Often times we say "security" when we really mean "identity."

In my view identity is a key application integrator, not only for RSS-based applications but for any application. As soon as we know someone's identity then a whole bunch of barriers fall and new opportunities arise. This includes things such as convenient single sign-on, access control (ok, "security") and also personalization; being able to send needed information tailored to the right person.

Personalization of RSS feeds is what is really going to rock the world. After all, doesn't personalization go to the heart of what users of aggregators are trying to do; make more efficient use of their time? RSS changed the blogging world but identity-driven RSS could change the world of corporate applications.

Sure, using RSS for better blog reading is great and so is using RSS in more dynamic scenarios such as monitoring search results, retrieving the latest weather, or watching someone's wish list. But, when a solution can retrieve information intended for me, from applications I have to deal with all of the time, then it starts solving my most critical information aggregation problems.