Description: What Is Web Syndication? Web site syndication has gotten more popular as sites reference each other not only by a single hyperlink but also by embedding content. The idea was pioneered by Netscape's Rich Site Summary (RSS) XML format. RSS was developed in early 1999 to populate Netscape's My Netscape portal with external newsfeeds ("channels"). Since then RSS has taken on a life of its own and now thousands of sites use it as a "what's new" mechanism.