The role of content in Web Design has changed with time. In Web design today, it is common to combine content from various sources for use on the website. An effective web design strategy today, places a greater emphasis on syndicating content than before.

Wikipedia describes Web syndication as a method to supply content to multiple websites. One of the most common implementations of web syndication is the use of RSS feeds for making content from a website available to others that consists of a summary of recently added content on the website.

Brief History of Content Syndication

Syndication of content on the Internet became popular in Web Design since the early 2000’s. However its use has increased manifold in recent years. Today, content syndication plays an important role in web design and a wide range of content is syndicated freely on the Internet. There are millions of online publishers, including newspapers, commercial / personal websites and blogs that regularly publish their latest news, posts, offers or other information as news feeds of a standard format. Some newsfeed formats that are most commonly used are RSS and Atom.

As websites, blogs, social networks and portals continue to gain popularity on the Internet, there is and ever increasing demand for reusable content.

Web 2 and Content Syndication

The web design industry is considered to be in its second generation. The word “Web 2.0″ is often used in reference to the second generation of web design and development. One of the main characteristics of Web 2.0 is the emphasis on information sharing and collaboration on the Internet. The recent popularity of Web 2.0 as the new standard for developing and designing websites has led to the establishment of many popular website communities and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and My Space to name a few.

Two of the most important characteristics of Web 2.0 are interactivity and content syndication. The emergence and popularity of Web 2.0 has led to a further increase in the requirement for syndicating and sharing content among websites on the Internet.

Two of the most popular Newsfeed formats for content syndication are the Atom and RSS standards. These are standardised methods to make ‘feeds’ of recently-published content available for sharing with other users or websites. RSS and Atom feeds make it possible for users to subscribe to feeds or use freely available software to display new and updated content.

Commercial benefits of Web syndication

Although freely available In syndicated content has become popular on the internet, content syndication also offers commercial opportunities.

Some content creators use a similar method to distribute proprietary content on multiple partnering websites or portals. Commercial web syndication involves partnerships between content producers and distribution outlets. There are different types of partnership agreement between the parties concerned. One method is where the content available via the feed is licensed on a fee basis. Another method is ad-supported content where ads are placed on the feed and the revenue is shared between the content’s producer and the publishing site.