The thought that Notes is dead is dead

Generalismo Franco is still dead is dead, says Ed Brill in sessions at Lotusisdeadsphere. From all reports, Lotus (IBM) has killed the notion that Domino/Notes is dead by assuring the 6700 attendees that the move to GrouPlace is vastly overstated. Meanwhile, IBM has discovered RSS and maybe Attention, but don't worry, Notes is still not dead. I guess this falls into the category of negative gestures -- branding around the lack of deadness in this case.

Wait, this is a job for Memeorandumb (where in the world is Gabe Rivera?) or Digg or TailRank. I finally got around to subscribing to a few of these sites just to see what duplication they yielded. I've been subbed to Gabe's site for months, and have noticed it makes a good replacement for the NYTimes home page, particularly on Mondays due to their Information section. TailRank loves the Yahoo is dead thread almost as much as the Yahoo buys Digg thread; not surprising that Kevin would be interested in flipping stories. When even Om Malik starts talking attention you know the VCs may finally be tuning in.

Back to Notes and its lack of deadness. None of the attention sites are viralizing the Notes story. Stephen O'Grady's Q&A provides the most comprehensive microchunk as usual, but Notes' DeadRank barely flinched in the Memeosphere. Business 2.0 pronounced RSS the Best innovation of 2005, so maybe Notes can be the Deadest Product of 2005. That would make it the fifth or sixth consecutive year atop the Dead list, which follows for my amusement and possibly yours:

1. Lotus Notes
2. Lotus
3. Office
4. Software
5. MSN
6. Mainstream Media
7. Citizen Journalism
8. The West Wing
9. PageRank
10. Top Ten Lists