Ten Reasons Why

Doc Searls is is on the right track:

My advocacy here is on behalf of syndication. I don’t want to get into technical arguments, unless they’re about language, which is where my own technical expertise lies.
Yesterday I said I thought Nova Spivak’s “meta” talk was too vague, and that “syndication” was a better word to describe what RSS (which he likes) does.
While “syndication” may be more specific, however, today I’m not sure it’s not misleading, unless we redefine it, which I think we can.

And the day before:

The act of syndication is a statement about the willingness of something to be known. I think that’s the key. This “meta” business sounds to vague to me. When I explain RSS to people and use “metadata,” their eyes glaze. When I use “syndication,” their eyes shine, because they know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a real word.

In my experience, emphasis on the XML aspects of syndication induce the same kind of eye-glazing.
I’m not sure where Doc stands on the little orange icon, but shifting the focus onto the process of syndication and aggregation is the right direction. Focusing on the value of and removing technical impediments to that process (as opposed to making the process all about the data format that makes up its guts) is what will take the tech mainstream.
[Note: I orginally drafted this post on Monday morning, but didn't post it until this morning (Wednesday). When doing so, I forgot to change the Authored On date, so, chronologically, it got posted two days in the past. I've updated the timestamp to indicate the actual posting time, not the time of drafting.]

Greg Syndication & Aggregation