<rss5:account service="twitter">davewiner</rss5:account>

<rss5:account service="facebook">dave.winer.12</rss5:account>

If you're an aggregator, like Feedly or Digg, you can use this information to link from my posts to my Twitter or Facebook presence. This will allow readers of my posts to communicate directly with me, or follow me on those social services, in addition to using my RSS feed.

If you're a publication, like Engadget or TechCrunch, for example, you could add these items to your feed, to help give aggregators a greater incentive to adopt them, and also to facilitate flow between your various sources of content. Nothing wrong with having people following you on Twitter or Facebook as well as your feed.

If you're a blogging tool vendor, like WordPress or Tumblr, you could ask users for this information, and if they provide it, add it to their feeds. This is what we did in Fargo.

The philosophy of RSS, imho, is to embrace all channels of communication without reservation. Facebook and Twitter are, in some sense, competitors of RSS. But we support them even so, because users love them.

This is the same spirit that led Bill Gates to support the Mac in its early days. The Mac was a great product, even if it competed with Microsoft's operating system.

If you look at the source of the Scripting News feed, you'll see a bunch of other new items. That'll give you an idea of what I'm going to be pushing next. But for now, let;'s have a little interop success with the new <rss5:account> element.

No chicken and egg. We get the ball rolling. The best way to start is to start.