March 22, 2005

Syndication

A funny little thing I just noticed: well-known blogger Dave Winer pointed to an article on the Seattle Times website. He attributed the story to the Seattle Times, but a quick look at the actual story says they're just re-publishing a syndicated story from, in this case, "Knight Ridder Newspapers and Newsday." Nothing unusual about that. But, I'm willing to bet that the reason Dave linked to the Seattle Times site (and gave it credit) was because the Times offers RSS feeds, and Dave probably saw the item in one of the feeds. If my little theory is right, then this is yet another good reason for content providers of all stripes to offer RSS feeds...the more ways you offer access to your content, the higher the likelihood someone will notice and tell others. It is not exactly groundbreaking, but a point worth noting.