I stopped doing full-text feeds a while back without much ranting and raving about it from those who are pro full-text feed or anti full-text feeds. So for the most part I’d have to come to the conclusion that you as my reader do not really care. After seeing something that Chris posted about why full-text feeds are dead I felt like I wanted to go a little deeper on this topic myself.
Personally I love syndication! I have my feed reader packed full of some of my favorite Web sites. Some of them provide full-text RSS and some do not. I find myself reading those that do not do full-text RSS more often. What? Am I crazy?! Well, let me explain.
I don’t think that RSS is a replacement for getting content out there to the people. It is not a replacement, but it is a helpful tool. It helps me scan headlines to see what was posted where and gives me a tease to see if I am interested in reading it or not. You see even with having all my favorite Web sites in one place, I still don’t have time to read all the content that is posted. So with those Web sites that give me non full-text feeds they are trying to sell me on reading the rest of the article.
They have a few lines to wrap up what is in the article in a nutshell. Think of it as reading the back of a book before you decide to read the whole thing. You do not just pick up any old book and read it front to back in one sitting, do you? No. You read the back cover, learn what it is about and in your head you decide if that interests you or not. Just think of partial RSS feeds as that flipping over to read the back cover of the book. It teases you into reading the rest of the article or you put the book down and pick up another one.
Now the second reason why I do not use full text RSS feeds is the reason that Chris Pirillo explains in his write up about the topic. I too have problems with link farms picking up my content, linking it and trying to make a name on the fact that they can do so with little to no problems at all. You see they used to just plain cut, copy and paste my articles onto their Web sites. These days though, by adding my RSS feed into the trouble making Web site they don’t have to do a thing. Then fresh content is delivered to them daily. If I had full-text RSS, I’d be loosing visitors to my Web site because they would be stealing my content. As a content provider that doesn’t make me happy.
I hate the mentality out there that content providers are all multi-millionaires that can afford to not have ads or make any sort of revenue off their content. For every person you have out there who is blocking ads from a Web site, you have a Web site with good solid content shutting it’s doors because they can’t afford to keep things up and running. Yeah, I make revenue off of my blog Mitchelaneous and the Web Hosting Show. I do so by putting up a few Google Adsense links up. Why? The reason is just like everyone else, I need to make money to survive. Good looks and boyish charm only goes so far these days. Eric Rice brings up the point that this is why folks are looking to put ads in RSS. As soon as I can advertise in my RSS feeds I am going to do so too. Why? Let me put it this way.
A shoe maker makes shoes, right? Then where do I have the place to take away his hammer and nails and tell him I’d rather see him make his shoes another way. That’d be rude, wouldn’t it?
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