Friday was my last day on the XML team at Microsoft. On Monday I start work as a Program Manager on MSN Communication Services Platform team. This team is responsible for the server side implementation of several aspects of MSN including MSN Messenger, some of Hotmail and MSN Groups.

My immediate responsibilities will involve working on the back end of MSN Spaces which is a hosted blogging service in the same vein as Blogger, LiveJournal and TypePad. The site is currently in beta for the Japanese audience.

This means I'll no longer be responsible for the XML Developer Center on MSDN which now will be managed by Irwin Dolobowsky. My work-related blog will shortly no longer appear on that page. However I will continue to write the Extreme XML column on a bi-monthly basis. Arpan Desai is the contact person for the aspects of the XML programming model in the .NET Framework I was responsible for, specifically the System.Xml.XPath namespace, System.Xml.Schema namespace and the System.Xml.XmlNode hierarchy.

If you are curious as to why I decided to make this move, some of the thinking behind my decision can be gleaned from my weblog post Social Software is the Platform of the Future. 

Update: This move does not change my status as the project lead on RSS Bandit.