Web syndication is making a section of a website available for other sites to use. This could be simply by licensing the content so other people can use it, but more commonly these days web syndication refers to making feeds available from a site so other people can display an updating list of content from it (for example one's latest forum postings, etc.). This originated with news and blog site but is increasingly used to syndicate any information. For example, Dan Savage's Savage Love advice column is regularly syndicated.
Although the format could be HTML or JavaScript it is more commonly XML but there has been considerable discussion about the right format leading to RSS having parallel versions and more recent attempts to produce a new web syndication XML variant.
LiveJournal offers an option to automatically syndicate external websites such as Neil Gaiman's blog.
See also
- Atom/Echo
- Creative Commons
- RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.x)
- Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.9x/2.x)