Web syndication

Web syndication is a form of syndication in which a section of a website is made available for other sites to use. This could be simply by licensing the content so other people can use it, but more commonly these days web syndication refers to making Web feeds available from a site so other people can display an updating list of content from it (for example one s latest forum postings, etc.). This originated with news and weblog sites but is increasingly used to syndicate any information.

Although the format could be HTML or JavaScript, it is more commonly XML. Considerable discussion about the right format has led to RSS (protocol), which has several parallel versions, and more recent attempts produced the new Atom (standard) web syndication format and protocol.

RSS draws criticism for having at least three different versions of it in circulation without full cross-compatibility. RSS 0.9, 1.0, and 2.0 are all to some extent independent of each other. All of these standards have been accused of not taking on board comments from the wider community.

= See also =

*News aggregator *Creative Commons