Today Netvibes had a so called European release with a number of Netvibes Universes build with hyperlinks from European content suppliers. De Volkskrant on Netvibes was one of the Universes released today.

All the great things I have been part of last year confronted me with the incredible power of RSS feeds and API’s over and over again. Information is more and more separated from presentation. Semantic information storage by use of XML is probably the best computer invention since the graphic user interface.

As a content provider we benefit enormously from presenting our information in human and machine readable XML.

In the next few years information will separate even more from presentation. Within a few years producers will just have to focus on keeping XML feeds and API’s online and up to date.

Being extremely compatible is the new distribution model.

Only one problem. There is no business model in XML. The only way to monetize your content on other sites is to mix advertisements with your content (advertorial) or make it available via paid subscription models. Maybe we should design a XML tag for advertisement links.

update earlier this week the Volkskrant / VK.tv YouTube channel was officially released.