When I tell people about syndication I like to do some comparisons
to banner ads:

Like a banner ad, a syndication file:

* Is provided to draw traffic to the site.

* Provides information about the site to raise interest (headlines for
an RSS file, images or text for an ad).

* Provides a way to navigate from the ad to the site (URL).

* Is provided in one place and consumed in another.

However:

* Banner ads provide no interesting machine-readable information.
Headlines, by way of comparison, can be indexed, sorted, categorized,
aggregated and so forth. The intermediaries between the original
RSS file and the ultimate presentation can add value in many ways.

* The original site has to pay to get a banner ad placed. Since the
syndicated information adds value to the syndicating site and to the
site presenting the headlines, payment is generally not an issue. The
syndicating site gains traffic, and the presenting site gains access
to useful content.

* Headlines, by their nature, are always fresh. Once you've seen an
ad 5 or 10 times, you will subconsciously filter it out. But headlines
change all the time.

Jeff;


-----Original Message-----
From: Julian Bond [mailto:julian@...]
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 1:31 PM
To: syndication@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [syndication] Evangelizing RSS


What's in it for the traditional media outlets to publish a public RSS
feed?

I'm curious about NY Times vs Red Herring, Guardian

--
Julian Bond mail:julian@...
workurl:http://www.netmarketseurope.com
weblog:http://roguemoon.manilasites.com
ICQ:33679668 Tel:+44 (0)20 7420 4363
tag: So many words, so little time