rss revisited/changing tactics
Every respectable blog needs an rss. Setting one isn't particularly hard (though I must admit, I didn't do it myself), choosing how to implement your rss feed is something else. There are two ways of going about it, and depending on where you look you'll find different preferences. So when I launched, I chose one way, today I'm switching sides.
rss: tease or deliver
The prime question you should be asking yourself when setting up an rss feed is pretty simple. Do you want to include the full article so people can read it in their favored rss reader, or do you send the intro of your article so people are supposed to click through to your site. There is no straight answer to this question, much depends on the situation and the control you want as a site owner.
attempt 1 - rss with intro
Right before launch I was still considering the benefits of both methods. After thinking long and hard about it, I chose to only include the intro of the article into the feed. I had some very specific reasons for this.
First of all, when you design a website you're establishing your presence on the web. You try to stand out from other blogs and you spend time on typography so people will have a nicer time reading your stuff. All this time is wasted when the full article goes into your rss and people don't click through to your site.
To top that, a page on your site is probably more than an article. There are comments, internal related link, external related links, You can advertise new features and options in the sidebar, .... All these things are usually lost when you include the full article into a feed.
But what really got me convinced were user statistics. I was starting a blog and I needed to know whether people were interested enough in my articles. All those reading the rss feed would be lost from my statistics, which could make a serious dent in my motivation to keep on writing. So considering all the remarks above, I decided to go with the intro of the article.
attempt 2 - rss with full article
More than 6 months after launch, I've come to change my view on things.
Most importantly, I now know that there is a small but devoted group of people reading my articles. So the importance of user statistics isn't all that crucial anymore. And since my launch I now have a way to keep track of my rss stats, which is of course a big help in keeping track of my readers.
There's another thing that dawned on me. A portion of my readers is happy with the intro alone. Those people can still click through to read the full article on my blog, so I'm not really losing anyone there by switching. On the other hand, I'm gaining people who prefer to read the full article in their rss feed, so I'm actually expanding my reader base (which is of course my ultimate goal) by switching tactics.
rss - a new dawn
There are other variables to consider depending on the kind of site you own and depending on the kind of readers you're trying to reach. By sending the whole article you will generate extra traffic for people. Also, advertisements are a big issue when considering the type of rss you want to implement. Still, these issues are of little importance to my blog.
So from today on, along with a few other small changes, my rss will include the full article. Rejoice!
don't assume that just because some people don't come to your site for the full article, that we are "satisfied with just the intro", that we never come to the site for the full one, or that we'd be happy with the full article in our readers.
I have taken to removing feeds that include the full article in cases where the articles tend to be lengthy, because they take up too much space, and overall it feels obnoxious to be sent huge long blocks of text, with no cut. I VASTLY prefer intro-only rss feeds - in fact, I think they are the most considerate approach. that way, readers get a taste of the article and can decide if they have sufficient time/interest to read the full article, and can do so at their leisure.
also, don't assume that just because a reader doesn't come to your site for the full article, that your intro was lost on them. I am constantly copy/pasting urls and sending them to friends/colleagues who I feel might be interested in an article I don't have time/interest to read. rarely do I do this from the site itself - I generally do so right from my feed reader.
put a different way: you'd never put full articles on your site's homepage, so why do it on someone else's feed reader?
I'll admit that I made it sound a little black/white in the article, I'm pretty sure that your case can be considered an exception. It is not like my rss feed is taking up hundreds of MBs of harddisk space.
Well, to be honest, I don't put anything from my blog on my homepage, so that analogy might be a little bit off centre anyway ;)
I understand what you're saying, but there are many people and many of them have their own ways of using a feed reader. Some use it to download articles and expect to read them afterwards, even without an internet connection, some use them on their mobile phones and don't want to click through to a website, some just don't like to click through at all.
I could make different feeds for all profiles. One with full articles, one with full articles but without the images, one with only the intros. But that won't make it any easier either, but there's probably a fourth option, and a fifth too.
It's about finding the right balance, and there will always be someone that prefers the "other way". In your case, I'm sorry for taking this decision, but I'm not reversing it as I believe this is the best compromise to reach as many people as possible. You can still bookmark my site though :)
RSS is about having information you're interested in come to you. If you're tracking many news websites and blogs and your life is pretty busy you don't want to start browsing to each of them and skim the homepage to find out what's new, wasting time loading pages and their advertisments.
RSS helps by extracting the useful information as text-only (mostly) and send it to you. Gathering all the information you care about in your Mail/RSS reader. Where's the use in having to click to load the page with the actual story in a browser for every RSS update. Again bothering you with page-loading and, more importantly even, continuous application and context-switching between your Mail/RSS reader and a browser. There's ease of use having everything you want to know gathered in the same application.
Also the point that it would be obnoxious for a website to send you much text after willingly subscribing to its feed doesn't make much sense to me. And unless we're talking about a feed with a lot of media in it, they don't take up much space at all... Let's say an update takes 3KB... Then saving on 600KB picture on your computer would be equivalent to 200 updates. These days the photos taken with a typical camera are 1MB (up to 8MB with decent cameras) In general complaints about data taking up too much space don't hold much value anymore these days.
You also don't have to save all the RSS feeds. But I agree harvesting information is tempting. Though it's not like you copy/paste and save webpages or links to them every time you find something interesting either. No-one obliges you to keep all the feeds you receive.
For me getting the full article is how it should be. I want the information without having to click anything, that's why I signed up for the RSS. Their size is negligible. If you don't like what you started reading, deleting the feed takes half a second.
Interesting that the answer to this seems to be a unanimous "no one is forcing you to receive this". I guess the bottom line is that with such a huge internet, and with so many blogs, one reader doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
As an aside, not everyone uses a portable device or separate feed reader to access this type of content, so a discussion about kb size is a bit out of place. In any case - you're right and I said it first. I don't have to keep reading this feed.
I'm sorry if you feel this way, because that is not the message I'm trying to send. The right reader can be enough to get one of my articles to a big blogger, which in return can open up a whole new audience for my articles.
Sadly, there is no way for me to find out who that "right reader" is, all I have is logic and statistics. And if I can reach 10 people, the chance of hitting that reader is bigger than when I only reach 5.
The current change in rss implementation doesn't take anything away from the way it was before, it only adds. One can think that these additions are useless, but even then you still get what you want. Only a bit more. Should I switch back, there's a definite group of people that doesn't even get what they want (the full article).
And if you want to know, on a personal level I agree with you. I don't read full articles in my feed reader (even though I have a separate application for my feeds) and if the full article is included, I still click through to my site. But this decision was not about my preference, it was about me as an author trying to reach the biggest audience possible. I hope you can at least understand that :)
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