Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I create software for people that create software and I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

More on syndication

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 19 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

5 Aug 2004

Previously someone asked about the word syndication and what it means in the blog world. Prompted by a question I received, here are some more thoughts on the use of “Syndicate this Site” and what it means to have and use an RSS feed.

Typically “syndicate this site” means that the site owner has an XML feed (RSS and ATOM are the popular formats) that you can use to read their content. While syndication in the offline world refers to the fact that you can purchase certain content (comics, old TV reruns) for use in your publication, bloggers don’t often think of it that way.

For a variety of reasons, the word syndicate is misused by bloggers. What a blogger means is that they offer a feed that can be used to read their site in a news reader or on a site like My Yahoo or Bloglines that aggregates feeds. They don’t typically mean that you can use their feed on your commercial site.

That said, if you contact some of these blogs, you may be able to get permission from them to use their material on your site with attribution. Some bloggers are open to this and some aren’t. The answer you get will depend greatly on what you intend to do with the feed, who the blogger is, and how nicely you ask.

Charles
August 5, 2004 6:03 PM

Indeed some bloggers (or site owners with RSS feeds) actively encourage syndication of their content (in the orginal sense of the word). Here's a bunch of news feeds available for free syndication: http://www.feedrollpro.com/index.php?action=viewPublishers

Bill Flitter
August 5, 2004 7:43 PM

One potential problem is feeds being syndicated without the authorization of the copyright holder. It will become more of an issue when feed consumption increases. Content can now be scraped from a publisher's site and distributed without their control.

Andrew Quinn
August 8, 2004 6:34 PM

Bill - Yes, but hasn't that been possible ever since Copy and Paste was created?

This discussion has been closed.

Recently Written

Too Big To Fail (Apr 9): When a company piles resources on a new product idea, it doesn't have room to fail. That keeps it from succeeding.
Go small (Apr 4): The strengths of a large organization are the opposite of what makes innovation work. Starting something new requires that you start with a small team.
Start with a Belief (Apr 1): You can't use data to build products unless you start with a hypothesis.
Mastery doesn’t come from perfect planning (Dec 21): In a ceramics class, one group focused on a single perfect dish, while another made many with no quality focus. The result? A lesson in the value of practice over perfection.
The Dark Side of Input Metrics (Nov 27): Using input metrics in the wrong way can cause unexpected behaviors, stifled creativity, and micromanagement.
Reframe How You Think About Users of your Internal Platform (Nov 13): Changing from "Customers" to "Partners" will give you a better perspective on internal product development.
Measuring Feature success (Oct 17): You're building features to solve problems. If you don't know what success looks like, how did you decide on that feature at all?
How I use OKRs (Oct 13): A description of how I use OKRs to guide a team, written so I can send to future teams.