Sioux Falls Business Journal

INSIGHT: Syndication maximizes Web-based reach

By David Seruyange For the Sioux Falls Business Journal

Tuesday, 10 July 2007

We’ve trained our imaginations to seek out revolutionary change: that which imposes a lasting, inexorable transformation on our lives. Sometimes, however, the change that makes the most meaningful difference is an evolutionary change, one that builds upon what we already have and gives it more meaning. David Seruyange Consider, as an example, the Web. Although it followed the underlying infrastructure of the Internet by decades, the Web has become a part of daily life in a manner that the Internet by itself could not. It is the Web that is evolving – specifically, the way that information is distributed. A new paradigm, Web-based syndication, presents new opportunities for the ways in which we interact on the Web whether as users, developers or businesses. Web-based syndication actually is quite simple. Web sites summarize their contents in compact formats that have been standardized. Special tools called aggregators gather these summaries and allow their users to have a single interface for all the underlying content. The advantage for a single user is quite obvious: rather than navigating to various Web sites to gather information, they are able to consume multiple sources of data in a single location. The individual user’s experience is the tip of the iceberg for one simple fact: the biggest consumers of syndicated summaries are not human users but rather pieces of software and other Web sites. An example of this is the Yahoo! News page. If you look at the “Top Stories” section, you will notice that the articles have been divided by source: The Associated Press, Reuters and others. This information is gathered by retrieving the summaries on those sites – retrieval of which is not human but rather done on our behalf by the developers of the Yahoo! News page. At this point, we are faced with two important questions: What are the implications of this technology, and what is the strategic importance of syndication for business? The first question has a simple answer. Syndication means that fewer Web sites will be visited directly. The second question is not simple, although there are some clear opportunities that present themselves. Perhaps the most exciting thing about syndication for a business is that it offers a chance to extend its reach on the Web. By summarizing your frequently updated content, you will facilitate users and tools that need to get to that information. Where does one start with syndication? If you are considering offering business content in a syndicated format, the best place to begin is by coming up with a list of the most frequently updated information that you want to share. Follow that with the design of a summary format that will be able to pull users to your site for the information that interests them. Accompany your syndicated content with a marketing strategy that lets your customers and business partners know they have that resource available. Finally, grow your syndication strategy by listening to your subscribers and improving the design and quality of the information you provide.