Re: [syndication] A message to the lurkers on the list

[Ian Graham <ian.graham@utoronto.ca>]

On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, Brendan Quinn wrote:

> Tristan Louis wrote:
> > To me syndication means sharing your information. It can be for including
> > within a web site or for some other sort of manipulation. The advantage of
> > syndication, from my point of view, is that it provides syndicators a
> > chance to expand the brand beyond their own site.
> 
> So everyone, is there a real or perceived difference between the idea of
> giving away your information, versus giving away *links* to your
> information?

This would depend on the application and also on the business model.  For
example, you could imagine using a syndication mechanism for doing content
synchronization between different corporate sites -- that is, within an
organization and not between different organizations. For example, if XYZ
Inc. published a special bulletin relevant to all their staff, this could
be 'syndicated' to many different internal XYZ Inc. corporate sites. 

RSS, on the other hand, provides the second style of delivery you mention
-- giving away links/descriptions (i.e. 'metadata') only, and no content. 
This is also an important application of syndication, but not the only
one.

So, as I see it, a syndication language needs to be able to support many
different payloads, not just RSS-style data.

Ian
--
Ian Graham ..........................  http://www.utoronto.ca/ian/
i a n   d o t   g r a h a m    a t    u t o r o n t o   d o t  c a 

 
> I work at a big media company and when I start talking syndication,
> everyone gets frightened, as they think I'm talking about giving away
> our stories to whoever wants them. But what I'm really talking about is
> RSS-style linking. I usually use the word "distribution" but that has
> the same connotations.
> 
> Our editorial people are usually happy to give away headlines and URLs
> (although they would like people to sign agreements or something, so
> that our headlines aren't "abused"). Giving away stories for free is a
> big no-no. Even giving away abstracts is an issue, as the abstracts are
> usually part of the stories, and the author deserves payment if their
> work is republished elsewhere, even just one sentence.
> 
> Talking RSS advocacy:
> 
> As far as getting the big players to accept RSS, it's up to us as a
> group to see what else is out there, and work out how RSS fits in. The
> IPTC guys are working on NewsML, which has some crossover... As just
> discussed, ICE can be used with RSS... there may be other formats?
> 
> And support software is the next step. The RSS Perl module is a good
> step, has anyone built a Java class/bean to support RSS?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Brendan.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Brendan Quinn                            bquinn@theage.fairfax.com.au
> Technology Manager, Portals & Distribution      Phone +61 3 9601 4246 
> f2 - Fairfax Interactive Network                  Fax +61 3 9601 4231 
> 601 Lt Lonsdale St, Melbourne 3000 Australia     http://www.f2.com.au
> 
> Deeper, faster, smarter...                 http://olympics.smh.com.au
> 
> 
> 
>