So Robert Scoble points to an interview with Michael Affronti, an Outlook PM about the built-in RSS aggregation feature in Outlook 12. Nik Cubrilovic weighs in with a provocatively titled post "A Thousand Startups Crying". A number of other bloggers pick up on the meme and suddenly we're having a wake for third part aggregators. Nik essentially writes an obit for third-party aggregation tools including my personal favorite, NewsGator, as well as IntraVnews, Attensa, and others. He quotes Weblogs, Inc.'s Jason Calacanis who recently predicted that:

1. Half of the indie RSS readers will shut down, go out of business, or just stagnate as the major portals take over this space.
2. No RSS readers will be bought in 2006 because every major buyer has already built one.

While I take no issue with either of Jason's predictions, I don't buy the notion that Microsoft is going to be putting a strong player like NewsGator at risk anytime soon. As many of you know, I've been beta testing Office 12 and, while the NDA prohibits me from going into any detail, I can tell you that what I see in the current beta 1 release isn't causing anyone at NewsGator to lose sleep. And I've never had the sense that NewsGator was being built to flip. They have all the hallmarks of a company that's being built to last.

Microsoft has yet to convince me that they really get RSS. The RSS features in Outlook 12 are rudimentary at best. Yes, they will expose RSS to a broad audience of Outlook users who might never go out of their way to acquire a third-party tool - even a free one. That's a good thing and I think Microsoft would have been deservedly criticized if a new Outlook release missed the boat on RSS (as it has on support for newsgroups for so long). And, while Nik does provide a footnote to his post that states he is aware of the fact that NewsGator has more to offer than an Outlook add-in, he doesn't follow through on the thought. Scoble, however does.

Like Robert, the reason I have a lot confidence that NewsGator (at least) will remain a viable third-party alternative to Microsoft's built-in tools is the one thing they get so right: synchronization. I can read my RSS feeds using three separate tools provided by NewsGator - an Outlook add-in, the highly regarded FeedDemon client, and a web portal. And they all know what I've read. If I mark something as read in Outlook. FeedDemon knows it. So does the web portal. It's elegant, graceful, and very well implemented. And it's the reason that I have never been terribly tempted to stray from the NewsGator fold for long. I've tried any number of other tools - both online and local - and always have returned to NewsGator after my evaluation.

I see a steady stream of new ideas and successful extensions to the brand coming from NewsGator They have two really smart guys at the helm in Greg and Nick and they are making inroads into the enterprise space with their own RSS server product as well as continuing to define the field for end-users.

One day, the notion of an RSS-specific tool may seem quaint. But based on what I've observed (and experienced) to date, none of the "big three" have RSS figured out to my satisfaction. I'm completely underwhelmed by Google's attempts so far - neither their RSS portal not the web clippings in Gmail are adequate for people who read tons of feeds. Microsoft is taking a typical approach - providing adequate functionality for the casual user an leaving it to third parties to define the edge of the envelope. Yahoo! so fr has come closest to getting it right but lacks an offline piece like FeedDemon.

With the official release of Office still months in the future, a huge beta tester community providing feedback, and a second beta release yet to come, it's quite possible Microsoft will ratchet things up and make Outlook's built-in capabilities more compelling for a high-volume reader like me. So I'm not making any predictions just yet - simply calling it as I see it at the moment. And what I see right now is that it's premature to be predicting the demise of strong third-parties in the RSS space.