Publishers: Industry Support

Though syndication feeds are becoming widespread at many different kinds of sites, they achieved their level of popularity today through their use in web—logging. If you haven't been exposed to weblogging, this is a type of site where entries—most often created by one author—are listed out as they are created in reverse chronological order. Rather than entire articles, weblog entries tend to be personal jottings or updates of information, which may or may not include links to other online material.

Weblogs and syndication feeds tend to mirror each other in basic functionality. In fact, it's difficult to say which was the driving force behind dated, time—limited, reverse-ordered entries: weblogging or feeds. Regardless, all weblogging tools provide built-in functionality to generate feeds in one or more formats. Taking a look at several of these tools: