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Why Aggregation Matters

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Sometimes, I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall trying to describe just why feed syndication and aggregation is important.  In an earlier post,I tried to expand the universe of discourse by throwing out as manypossible uses as I could dream up.  Joshua Porter has written areally good article about why aggregation is a big deal, even justconsidering its impact on web site design: Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content. 

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  1. wkearney99November 15, 2004 at 10:39 AM

    Heh, it's nice to see folks finally getting around to talking seriously about newsfeeds and syndication.  We've been running Syndic8  ( http://www.syndic8.com ), now in it's third year, as a way to help advance the cause.  

    It's very tough to develop the sort of things that show you "stuff want to read".  It's hard to ask a reader what it is they actually like and doubly hard to get them tell you want they don't like.  That and who really wants to hang out with people that think in lock-step?  But by publishing actual data that can be processed there are doors opening that will allow all sorts of indexing and reaggregation.  This is, as others have noted, a truly fundamental change in how people will come not only access, but understand just what's out there and what it means to them.

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