By Matthew Palmer
The idea of a wire news service was around long before the Internet.
By telephone, telegraph, or copy boy, content could be moved from
reporter to audience. Usually, this invaluable service to newspapers
was very expensive and, thus, exclusive. With ISyndicate, any web
site can include top news stories and photos for free.
What you get is a Java applet to place on our site listing top headlines.
You can choose from a wide variety of sources and topics: health from
the Mayo Clinic, sports from CBS Sportsline, business news from CNBC,
and top stories from Fox News. A user who clicks on the link will
be brought to that company's site for the story. That ISyndicate chose
to link content instead of hand out whole stories is smart business
for its sponsors. In a way, this is free advertising for them. It
is much more attractive than regular advertising because it also serves
a useful purpose for the surfer and increases the worth of a web site.
The system also keeps content from different sources separate. Linking
to an external site for the story means people can trust it more readily
(assuming they trust the news provider as a whole) than if the story
were more tightly integrated into the site. The content can't be tampered
with, but the provided headlines can still be automatically updated
as frequently as every fifteen minutes. The headlines are provided
in a self-contained box, clearly labeled with "ISyndicate, the
content provider, and when it was last updated. This is another way
to set outside information apart on a web site layout.
The real worth of this service depends on how site designers use
it. For, say, a homemade site about stock recommendations, a news
wire with business use might be useful. Using your own content would
be preferable, but for a small site trying to act professional, the
ISyndicate service could be a smart addition.