Here’s another reason to think RSS is truly hitting the big time: a group of high tech investors has come together to form RSS Investors, LP, a financial partnership with $100 million to support RSS-related Internet technology companies.
The new RSS venture fund, whose focus includes OPML and the newly proposed Microsoft extensions to RSS, will target sectors related to news aggregation, blogs and new classes of search engines. Aggregation applications which collect data in the financial and medical industries will strongly be pursued, according to a press release.
“RSS is emerging as the next great tool in the spread of information and ultimately freedom: freedom of expression, freedom of communication and freedom of information,” said Jim Moore, RSS Investors partner and a noted technology expert. “The Internet is the driving force behind the invention of new forms of communication enabling instantaneous personal dialogue across the globe. Like a mind constituted of millions of inter-networked neurons, the participants in this exchange of information are capable of astonishingly rapid and sometimes subtle community consciousness and action. The evolution of these communities has already had a profound effect on the media, professions and enterprises.”
Besides Jim Moore, other investors include Internet think tank guru John Palfrey and global venture capitalists Steve Smith, Richard Fishman and Tom Crowley.