"One name to rule them all, one name to find them, one name to aggregate them all and in our vocabulary bind them."

Now that RSS isn't the only game in town (or should I say, now that the people creating new formats aren't calling them all "RSS"), syndication formats need a single name with which to refer to all of them. "Syndication formats"--did I just use the name? Or is the word "syndication" a little too esoteric for the common man? I don't intend to come up with a definitive name here and now--just to muse a little on the subject.

Personally, I think "syndication" isn't so bad. It's a word people have heard, even if they're not quite sure what it means. Whatever term we come up with, the use of it to describe RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, Necho, Info Bite, and whatever other formats might be out there, is going to be new to people. As long as it's not something meaningless like "Snoogleflop", it probably doesn't matter that much.

On the other hand, "syndication" does have it's own meaning, and it's not necessarily what people are going to do with all of our Snoogleflop formats, so maybe something else would be better. I guess if we're going to pick a name, we first need to decide what common threads run through the intended and imaginable uses of all of the formats. Then we can consider what word or short phrase would best represent them all.