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SUP stands for Simple Update Protocol (officially, anyway, though it’s perhaps an acronym or backronym for “what’s up” aka “’sup”). It’s a JSON-based meta format for RSS/ Atom feeds useful for websites that deliver a large number of feeds, like a blogging platform, so that services subscribing to that site’s RSS feeds only need to download a single file to check for updates, and then download the other individual feeds as needed. SUP was invented by the ex-Google employees Paul Buchheit and Gary Burd of (recently redesigned) social feed aggregator Friendfeed. There is no official documentation at the moment outside of the Python source.
Friendfeed’s aim in introducing the format is to decrease the load in polling so many feeds from all over the web all the time (a polling that’s typically done whether or not the feed changed since last time). After all, that’s one of Friendfeed’s problems, too. “FriendFeed’s [...]