I setup My Status Cloud as both RSS Cloud and PuSH enabled. But when I post a new Tweet or cloud message, I can only rely consistently on Dave Winer’s RSS Cloud hub to pass my update information on. The “official” pubsubhubbub server is hit and miss. Whether it’s rate limiting or being lazy, in my little decentralized 140 character network, not every status update is pushed to me immediately by PuSH. Some are grouped together after two updates have been sent. That’s not real time.

I’ve subscribed to many feeds that are PuSH enabled through My Status Cloud. Or at least the FeedBurner feed published indicates that they are. When do I get the updates? Often a large amount of time after they are published. Whenever I’ve gotten a notification from an RSS Cloud server, it is usually within seconds, sometimes up to a minute.

You. Are. Random. That’s the perception I have. There are so many feeds that I’m passed PuSH notifications throughout the day for – with old content and no new content. Fat pings, useful? Yes. More fat pings than necessary? Not so much.

I’ll be honest. I haven’t taken the time to read through the complete documentation to see if I can figure out how the server end of things is supposed to work behind the scenes. When I decide to build a server, I will. Maybe I’m missing an explanation for the sporadic-ness that is coming out of there, but it really should be resolved. If we’re going to be real time, let’s be it already.

Yes, seriously, it is there there already.

I built a public aggregator that supports RSS Cloud and PubSubHubbub. Dave Winer has a public aggregator that supports RSS Cloud. Lazyfeed has an aggregator that supports RSS Cloud and PubSubHubbub. Google Reader has started to adopt PubSubHubbub. Many more are on the way, if not already here. A few more light switches to flip and all of a sudden you are playing catch up.

Who’s you? Let’s try who isn’t first.

CNN has it. Their news wire feed has been RSS Cloud enabled almost since the moment that Dave Winer announced support for RSS Cloud in WordPress.

Om has it. Another that has been RSS Cloud enabled since the beginning.

Techcrunch has it two ways – RSS Cloud through the main feed and pubsubhubbub through the FeedBurner feed.

Gizmodo supports pubsubhubub through FeedBurner. GDGT supports pubsubhubbub through their native feed.

Who doesn’t?

Engadget has nothing enabled. They’re now the last source of gadget information. NY Times – nothing, LA Times – nothing, AP – nothing, Washington Post – nothing, MSNBC – nothing, Fox News – pretends to, Reuters – pretends to. More detail on the “pretends to” later, anybody else I’m forgetting?

So what do you do as a publisher?

You Read and then implement.

If I can ship an RSS Cloud aggregator in a little over a week from scratch, and add support for pubsubhubbub in a night, all while working a full time job during the day that has nothing to do with either…. you can afford to spend some time figuring out the best way for you to publish content using real time tech.

Which one is better? I don’t make those decisions. Which one should you implement? Whichever one you ship first. Just do it already and get on board.

What shouldn’t you do as a publisher?

I’m not usually one to say this, but don’t put all your faith in Google. Not yet at least. Just because you’re site uses FeedBurner and FeedBurner has decided they support pubsubhubbub, doesn’t mean that your content is actually being pushed in real time. More than likely you’re setup to ping FeedBurner separately. Feedburner then decides when to poll you before turning around and notifying the hub that the content is updated.

Instead, take control of your publishing process. Your web folks should be able to make the basic notifications required for both RSS Cloud and pubsubhubbub to work. And this should something that is done separate from the FeedBurner process. Don’t count on them to ping on their time. Ping when you publish.

The web is live, RSS and Atom are alive, and content is flowing in real time. I’m harnessing it, and you will be soon. If you are a publisher, you do not want to miss this boat.

Anyhow.

Number One.

As of last night, My Status Cloud has support for both RSS Cloud and pubsubhubbub.

Now, while everyone decides which protocol to use, we can just use them. Ship both first, then decide. I like that answer the best.

Actually, they both have benefits and can probably coexist. More notes on what I think will follow. I’ve been closely watching the notifications roll in and I do have some observations to share. Even more so than you will see in the next couple posts.

Number Two.