Dare Obasanjo, the project lead on the RSS Bandit project (of which I contribute) is leaving his post as a Program Manager on the XML team at Microsoft to work as a Program Manager on the MSN Communication Services Platform team.
When Microsoft revealed a blogging service similar to Blogger, I had a feeling it was only a matter of time before Dare would somehow be involved with that seeing his interest in Social Software.
It will be interesting to see the direction Microsoft takes with social software. Although Microsoft perhaps doesn't see entering the aggregator market as a profit center, I wouldn't be surprised if that changes in the next year or so.
As aggregation continues to take off, it seems natural to incorporate it into Office. Remember that "Information At Your Fingertips" mantra Mr. Gates touted a while ago? Well I get most of my online information through two sources, Google and RSS Bandit.
In any case, I wish Dare well. Hopefully this is the platform for him to have some of his ideas implemented. I have to admit, I'd love to work on social software such as RSS Bandit and .TEXT full time. But I have a mortgage to pay.