Outlining by the fittest
At the moment, my prediction is that XOXO gets sidelined by OPML, insofar as expressing ideas and data in outline form takes off in general.
Context & Ripple Effects
This prediction lands mid-run of OPML enthusiasm: the day before, James Corbett argued in Why OPML is winning that the format's ecosystem gravity was beating rivals, and a companion hack showed how to build a page pulling the best item from each RSS feed using an OPML sampling approach. Against that backdrop, the author's bet that XOXO gets sidelined if outline-form publishing takes off reads as a verdict on a live format contest, not a stray musing.
First-order effects
- Developers choosing an outline format for new sharing and subscription tools face a de facto single-standard decision, since OPML already has working tooling while XOXO lacks comparable adoption.
Second-order effects
- If outlining catches on generally, aggregators and blog-platform authors converge their parsers on OPML, starving XOXO of the implementations it needs to stay viable.
Third-order effects
- The episode illustrates how lightweight data formats in the blog ecosystem tend to consolidate around whichever one ships usable tools first, regardless of relative design merits — a pattern that decides infrastructure before standards bodies do.
The trend: In microformat-era publishing, outline and syndication formats are winning through ecosystem gravity and working code rather than specification superiority.