Upward spiral of syndicated content
May 22nd, 2006
This is one thing I talked about in my presentation at Barcamp Brussels, I will put the complete presentation online. But the presentation itself isn’t that clear without my explanation. Smetty recorded my talk so I’ll make the presentation available when I can get hold of the podcast.
Every theory I’ll talk about on the blog, can later be found in my thesis paper.
What do I mean with syndicated content? It’s a pretty broad meaning, it is not only content in RSS or atom feeds. It can also be content you interacted with trough a web service / API.
As Peter Bailey notes on his blog you can interact with online content on different ways. Consuming has always been possible on the net. But thanks to the syndication of online content it has become much easier to interact on different ways with your content:
- Creating: it has never been easier for the end-user to publish content to the web. You don’t need technical skills to make content and publish it to the net. A few examples of very easy content publishing: Flickr Uploadr (just drag photos in a window and hit upload), google page creator, the very user friendly CMS wordpress …
- Collating: A lot of tools made it easier to collate online content. Most feed readers give you the option to save a feed item. You can bring together relevant content for later use. But the simplest form of collating online content is simple bookmarks. Examples: My FeedDemon feed reader has the feature to drag feed items in saved categories. Every feed item that can be useful for my thesis I can collate in my thesis saved category. A lot of content platforms give you the possibility to add the link to del.ico.us, you can tag it collate it and order it the way you want.
- Commenting: A lot of blogs, news platforms give you the possibility to add comments directly to a article. Even if this isn’t possible, you can simply use the quote the online content and make your own blogpost on it commenting on the article. Examples: the add comment box in a lot of blogs, news platforms, flickr, youtube, … The ease to reblog a feed item to comment on it in a lot of feed readers. Easy to blog items on digg.com or flickr: a button “blog this”.
- Collaborating: Easy to remix syndicated content. I can bring together my own blogpost with a used flickr photo. We group our flickr photos with a same theme in a flickr group. We link our del.icio.us bookmarks together with the del.icio.us network so we can share valuable information.
The essential part on interaction of content is:
The better your content is syndicated the more possibilities you create for users to interact with your content. Syndicated content is easier to consume, collate, comment on, collaborate with, (re)create..
Syndicated content added to the web can potentially make every other piece of syndicated content more valuable (=in analogy with Tom Coates “future of web apps” statements)
This is what I call the upward spiral of syndicated content:
When you create online content and syndicate it. It can become part of this upward spiral, the more people consume, collate, comment on, collaborate with your content, the more valuable it will become. If your content leads to new creations, those creations become part of your upward spiral and can be consumed, collated, commented on, …
- More interaction on your syndicated content means more value of the content.
- The more it leads to new creations, comments, … the wider the spiral becomes, the further the reach of your content.
Can you find more examples when syndicated content becomes more valuable? Or examples when it doesn’t ?
