Written on September 12th, 2007 at 01:09 am by Darren Rowse
Full Or Partial RSS Feeds – The Great Feed Debate
This week I want to try something a little different and attempt a debate here at ProBlogger. The idea is simple – I’ve chosen two people who I think have experience around a debated blogging topic to argue the case for either side of it. These two opinions will act as the first speaker for each side and then I (as the moderator) will hand it over to you the ProBlogger readership to act as the 2nd and 3rd speakers for each side.
The idea isn’t to have a bun fight over the topic but to flesh it out and engage in some good conversation and learning.
The Topic
The topic for this debate is ‘Full or Partial RSS Feeds?’ – it’s a topic I get asked about a lot and which I know there are good arguments for on both sides.
The Speakers
I’ve chosen two speakers for this debate that I think will get a good conversation going. They are:
Arguing for Partial Feeds is Gina Trapani – editor of the famous Lifehacker blog.
Arguing for Full Feeds is Rick Klau – former VP, Publisher Services at FeedBurner and currently in Strategic Partner Development at Google.
I should say before we start that I put Gina in a position of having to argue for something that she isn’t convinced of herself. She generously agree to participate however.
So without further ado – here’s some thoughts from Gina and Rick to get our discussion going. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts in comments below – no matter what they might be.
The Argument for Partial Feeds
Gina Trapani – editor at Lifehacker
At Lifehacker.com we offer a choice of either a full-post feed (with ads) or partial feeds (no ads.) While giving the reader a choice is a good thing (at the expense of adding an extra step to the subscription process), I can see why a publisher or a reader might prefer less-popular partial feeds.
As a publisher, providing a pull quote in your feed instead of the full post gives you the advantage of seeing which stories your readers are interested enough to click on. A lot of people assume that publishers use partial feeds just for extra on-page ad views, and that may be true in some cases. But back when I published a personal site – and advertisement-free site – I used partial feeds for editorial purposes. The necessary clicks from feed items served as instant reader feedback. You simply can’t do the kind of traffic tracking with full feeds than you can do with partial ones.
As a reader, I prefer partial feeds in some cases, especially from news sources who can summarize the point of the article in one sentence. Skimming CNET’s partial post feed, which just includes the story lead, is a lot easier and more efficient than including the entire article.
The Argument for Full Feeds
Rick Klau – former VP, Publisher Services at FeedBurner and currently in Strategic Partner Development at Google.
More than half a million publishers have burned nearly 900,000 feeds over at www.feedburner.com , so it should come as no surprise how often we are asked which is better: full-text or partial feeds? While there is no single, “right” answer that covers all situations, there are a number of often overlooked angles to consider.
First, I’d like to clear up a few points of confusion. Clickthroughs alone are an imperfect (if not altogether inaccurate) measure of a reader’s interest in a story. Partial feeds often make it harder, not easier, for a reader to know whether they’re interested in a story at all. If you just include a sentence or two of a post in a feed, you’re asking the reader to click through to read the rest of the post – when the actual substance of the post is not at all obvious from those first few sentences.
Regarding Gina’s statement that “you simply can’t do the kind of traffic tracking with full feeds that you can do with partial ones” – I respectfully disagree. Publishers who use FeedBurner’s feed management services can measure both feed item views ( i.e., posts which are read in the aggregator) as well as clickthroughs – giving them an accurate view of both clickthroughs, and more importantly, the clickthrough rate. This is true for both full feeds and partial feeds… and is often the best way to measure how engaged your audience is with your content. It should be noted that in feeds who’ve compared full and partial feeds, we’ve seen no hard evidence suggesting that partial feeds alone increase the clickthrough rate.
Now for some reasons why full feeds are in a publisher’s (and a reader’s) best interest. I think Mike Masnick at TechDirt hit the nail on the head earlier this week when he posted about this question:
[F]ull text feeds actually … lead to more page views… Full text feeds makes the reading process much easier. It means it’s that much more likely that someone reads the full piece and actually understands what’s being said — which makes it much, much, much more likely that they’ll then forward it on to someone else, or blog about it themselves, or post it to Digg or Reddit or Slashdot or Fark or any other such thing — and that generates more traffic and interest and page views from new readers, who we hope subscribe to the RSS feed and become regular readers as well. The whole idea is that by making it easier and easier for anyone to read and fully grasp our content, the more likely they are to spread it via word of mouth, and that tends to lead to much greater adoption than by limiting what we give to our readers and begging them to come to our site if they want to read more than a sentence or two.
As I wrote earlier this year on our corporate blog, full posts also contain far richer information within the posts – hyperlinks – that can be exploited by services like TechMeme, Technorati, and other RSS-aware services. Those links are valuable indicators of the relationships between posts – which can yield tremendous context for readers who want to discover related content. Partial posts rob readers (and automated services) of that context, as the hyperlinks themselves aren’t included in the partial posts.
Commercial publishers who distribute feeds often worry about the lack of revenue – they make money on their site and are understandably concerned that they are “giving away” their content through the feed. But it’s possible to monetize your feed directly (through FeedBurner’s feed and blog ad network, among other options) – and if you buy Masnick’s argument above, traffic to your site will actually increase thanks to the fuller feed (which means your site revenue will increase as well!).
Readers clearly prefer full feeds over partial feeds; one need only see the outcry from Freakonomics readers (read the comments) last week when they switched from a full feed to a partial feed to understand that readers value the delivery of information in its entirety, to an environment (their newsreader) they prefer. Certainly there are occasions when a partial feed is required: many commercial publishers have licensing issues that prevent them from including full text in the feed, and in those cases, some content’s better than no content. But when it’s better for the readers (who get what they want, where they want it), better for the publishers (who can drive more revenue and satisfy their users), and better for the ecosystem (which get more information, which allows them to add more value to their users), it’s my opinion that full feeds are simply better.
Have Your Say
OK – Rick and Gina have kicked the conversation off – it’s time to have your say!
Do you use Full Feeds, Partial Feeds – or both? Why?
98 Responses to “Full Or Partial RSS Feeds – The Great Feed Debate” - Add Yours
Iantrepreneur
September 12th, 2007 1:29 am
I agree with Rick, full feeds are far more better – I have feeds within my outlook and I look at the title and if it attracts me I say I will read it within my outlook – if its partial I will rarely go to the website – I am subscribed to your feed – its still traffic being conveyed to my eyes except in a different form of traffic generation.
I think full feeds are much better than of partial – since it will provide full information – it should not matter if I am reading from your page or from an rss reader – I am still a reader of your content
great arguments all in all
Anthony Lawrence
September 12th, 2007 1:34 am
I use partial feeds because that’s what I prefer to see when I read someone else’s feed. I don’t want to read through entire posts; I want to get a clue what they are about and read what I’m interested in.
I also don’t like the bandwidth – whether reading or posting my own feed. Of course the bandwidth isn’t my concern if I’m using FeedBurner (which I do), but on the reading side it just takes that much longer to run through and update everything I might want to read.
Dan Cole
September 12th, 2007 1:38 am
I would rather open a new tab for a post I want to read, then scroll past a bad post to some unknown location. I also often open many tabs from the same page, so I’m not use to reading post after post on the same page. Tabs also get closed automatically if the post isn’t good, so if a bad post comes first… I will close the tab before seeing other posts. I’m with Partial Feeds.
Avinash
September 12th, 2007 1:41 am
I agree with Rick as well. When I see full titles, I tend to be a curious and try to read it. The information provided is also fuller than partial feeds. I personally find full feeds better.
Avinash
http://www.photoswift.com
Mason from SmallFuel Marketing
September 12th, 2007 1:51 am
Count me in to Full feeds.
I’d prefer to skim the titles and, if I’m interested, read the rest of the post. Partial feeds serve no benefit to me as an RSS reader.
That said, I’ve had some of my readers request a partial feed email synopsis be sent out weekly, instead of a full feed daily. I think for email users it may be a different story.
– Mason
James Joyner
September 12th, 2007 1:52 am
Monetizing the blog feed is ridiculously hard. Feedburner provides a good service but their monetization is a joke. I’ve got 26,000 plus subscribers and more more money in a single day from AdSense than from a year of Feedburner’s ads.
The main argument against full feeds, it seems to me, is that it makes the job of those filthy scraper site parasites easier.
Tsahi Levent-Levi
September 12th, 2007 2:21 am
I definitely vote for full feeds. I usually drop my subscription on partial feeds – they just take too much time to skim through when you have over 100 posts a day and still need to produce some work on your own.
My view is that if you want to make money out of breakthroughs ,ads and whatnots you simply need to write good enough content that would make me come to the site. Harassing me with partial information will scare me away and not lure me in.
Christine
September 12th, 2007 2:30 am
I agree with Gina, if the partial feed is done correctly. If it’s the first few sentences of a post, it probably doesn’t pull me in enough to want to read the whole article. However, if it’s a two- or three-sentence summary of a post, it has the potential to let me know if it’s an article that will interest me or not. That’s where her editorial tracking would be truly effective.
PWdude
September 12th, 2007 2:33 am
Count me in for full feeds for sure.
Partial feeds in theory are good; less scrolling through etc, but unfortunately the opening paragraph on the majority of sites fail to draw the reader in, therefore I’d rather receive full feeds and embrace the full content of the site which includes the images.
Aaronontheweb (AjaxNinja)
September 12th, 2007 2:45 am
I think full feeds are better for many of the reasons Rick gave; readers should be able to view your content in the manner that suits them best and a partial feed won’t give the readers the full sense of your article.
Getting someone to read your article is difficult enough, forcing them to click through it once they’ve found your article and read part of it might actually reduce the total size of your readership. Running RSS adds within a feed is the best way to monetize RSS if that’s a concern.
Adam Snider
September 12th, 2007 2:45 am
As a reader, I prefer full feeds, so that I don’t have to leave my feedreader if I don’t want to. As a result, I provide my reader’s with full feeds.
I can understand why people use partial feeds—especially if they are monetizing their blog through advertising—but I think that providing the reader with an optimum experience should be your first priority. Besides, you can always add advertising to your feed, if you want.
Robin
September 12th, 2007 2:56 am
I originally moved from full to partial feeds for the simple reason that I wanted to use excerpts on my overcrowded front page, and my particular blog software doesn’t allow excerpts on the site and full posts in the feed. So, not everybody is using partial feeds to “monetize”. My guess is that most ad clickers on my site aren’t RSS readers anyway, they are people who show up via Google searches.
But I would like to note 2 things — 1. I got almost no complaints at all, and did not have any noticeable drop in RSS subscriptions, so I really think this depends on your blog’s subject matter, and 2. it had the unintended effect of drastically cutting down on content theft (a big problem in my niche).
Tamara Gielen
September 12th, 2007 3:01 am
I used to publish only partial feeds because I thought that by publishing full feeds I wouldn’t get so many page views. Boy was I wrong! I switched to full feeds because my readers were begging me to do so. And ever since I made the switch my page views are going up instead of down. I can’t explain it, but I love it :-)
ChrisB
September 12th, 2007 3:12 am
My site has a full feed, but in my reader I prefer partial feeds. This may be due to how bloglines works — if I “save” a full feed article, they take up a lot of space. If I could collapse full feeds in my reader, it wouldn’t be an issue.
Stephen Glauser
September 12th, 2007 3:13 am
Full feeds only. Period. And I will rarely subscribe to a partial feed. Of the 150+ feeds in my feed reader, 3 or 4 are partials.
markowe
September 12th, 2007 3:13 am
Since I started subscribing to ProBlogger, rather than visiting when the fancy took me, I have on the one hand been reading almost all the posts in their entirety, but on the other rarely visiting the site itself (though the notable exception to this is when I want to make a comment). So what do you want – people to read your content more, or to visit your site more?
You could do a little experiment, which might be a bit risky – try switching to summary feeds just for a few days, to see what difference it makes to your various stats.
Deano
September 12th, 2007 3:15 am
Seems like you had a bias towards the full feed in your article (3 paras against 8 for).
What I’m worried about with full feeds is the amount of people who can clone your content and automatically add it to their blogs.
Al
September 12th, 2007 3:15 am
I can’t stand partial feeds. So I don’t subject my readers to them.
Rete
September 12th, 2007 3:15 am
I prefer full feeds — I like to read in my rss reader because it is very clean, uncluttered, and a typestyle that is easy to read. If I get into an article and it is a partial feed, I’ll rarely click through to the website to read the rest, simply because it is hard for me to visually adjust to whatever color/font the website is using.
However, I will click through if I feel moved to comment (such as now). Isn’t that the best indicator of whether your post has successfully reached your audience?
OneMillionDollarBlog
September 12th, 2007 3:47 am
I think both of them are correct, I prefer full feeds to read because I do not have to view the website in order to see the ads. Now this is a disadvantage to the blogs because how can somebody say that they receive more traffic with full rss.
I place partial on my blog and people are happy , because I write in first sentence what is my post about and if they are interested they will follow the link to my page again.
Example: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakeMoneyBlogger
Krishna Kumar
September 12th, 2007 4:02 am
I prefer full feeds. In frustration with some blogs, I have written a blog entry on that back in July: http://www.thoughtclusters.com/2007/07/full-feed-problem-again.html
My feeling is that it doesn’t make any logical sense to have partial feeds because it actually results in smaller number of views and drives away high-quality readers who can share your post.
Matt McGee
September 12th, 2007 4:09 am
As a reader, I find myself paying much less attention to — and even unsubscribing from — blogs that only offer partial feeds. That also means I don’t often link to blogs that offer partial feeds.
As a blogger, I switched to full feeds about 6 months ago and saw an immediate jump in subscribers and comments on my blog.
Money Maker Blogs
September 12th, 2007 4:12 am
I’m torn about this one.
As a reader, I prefer full feeds because I have it all there in front of me and can skim through it fast if I have to without worrying that I am missing something essential.
As a blogger, for my more content based blogs I prefer to give partial feeds because of what Deano stated above… too many people are cloning content and replicating it on their websites using full feeds.
Danny @ Blogs for Money
September 12th, 2007 4:16 am
I prefer full feeds (as both a reader and publisher), but I can see arguments for both sides. If it’s not a blog I read an awful lot (because it’s 90% “today was my kids birthday”-type posts) I hate having to scroll through a long page (and it’s associated loading time). However I use Outlook to read mostly, which shows the subjects as if they were emails, so it’s rare I view a whole list of pages!
The How-To Geek
September 12th, 2007 4:48 am
Something about “Do unto your subscribers as you would have done to you…”
I think the argument depends greatly on the type of site, and where your traffic is driven from. Only a small part of my overall traffic comes from RSS, but my site is content based, not news.
If I could get the news in a full feed, I’d probably never visit the site in question, which is why most of the news sites force me to click through their partial content feeds… news content is only “good” for a short period of time, so it’s very unlikely that I’ll be stumbling across it later.
And monetizing of RSS feeds is currently a joke.
Patrick Hake
September 12th, 2007 5:16 am
The biggest problem with full feeds is the ease with which people can steal your content.
For a powerful blog, such as Problogger, this not an issue. For blogs with less search engine clout, having your content cloned can destroy your search engine placement.
If the search engines were smarter and simply time stamped new information and then ignored copies of that information later, I would happily use a full feed. So long as I see my content popping up in the SERPs on spam websites, I will continue to use a partial feed.
Chris Marshall
September 12th, 2007 5:48 am
I surveyed this issue previously in Should I Switch from a Full to a Partial RSS Feed? Without rewriting that post here, I’ll briefly address some of the problems in Rick’s argument:
If the content of your post isn’t indicated by the title and opening paragraph, you’ve just failed Writing 101. You’re probably losing potential readers due to your lack of structure, who click away before realizing your post is interesting or relevant to them. This is a larger problem than can be solved by publishing a full feed.
Rick is missing the point here. A click on a partial post in a feed is a vote to read it, and the lack of a click is a vote against. If you give the entire post at once, you’ve lost the ability to measure that. They may still click on a full post in order to comment on it, but that is a very different metric.
TheMadHat
September 12th, 2007 5:53 am
Full feeds. Although I stay subscribed, most partial feeds I don’t read much. With the sheer number of feeds (300+) I don’t have time to click over just to see if I’m interested in reading it.
If I am I’ll probably click over anyway for the comments. Gina makes a good case for the user option though, I may have to test that out. I’d like to know what the stats are for users selecting partial feeds vs full feeds.
Kelvin
September 12th, 2007 5:53 am
As a reader, I like full feeds. I don’t like to have to click on a title to see the original. This is extra work, and I consider it a waste of time when the actual article is not much longer than the partial feed. Every time I click on a link to go to a new article, I need to adapt myself into the new font, layout, etc. I would rather read them in my feed reader where I can just focus on the content. If I like the site enough, I’ll visit back (such as to check comments, etc.) later.
As a blogger, I usually prefer to give my readers full feeds. Once a while I would want to use partial feeds though, especially when my post gets technical and full of pictures for every single step of my step-by-step tutorials. But since most of the time I still prefer to give my readers full feeds, I stick with full feeds.
Matt Jones
September 12th, 2007 5:59 am
For me it just has to be full feeds. Having a bursting RSS inbox there is no way I will risk clicking and opening a naff post based on a couple of lines and its title.
Paolo Amoroso
September 12th, 2007 6:09 am
There’s another important variable: time, i.e. how many feeds a user follows. When the number of feeds grows, it becomes very time consuming to click items from partial feeds to check the whole story. That’s why as a user, and hence as a blogger, I avoid most partial feeds. Life is short — really.
Jennifer F.
September 12th, 2007 6:09 am
I would respectfully disagree that partial feeds are a good indicator of reader interest in your posts — they’re only a good indicator of reader interest in *the first few sentences* of your post.
Also, there’s that mysterious law of the internet that whoever is the most generous with information wins. I think that with truncated feeds there’s something slightly irritating to readers about the fact that you’re making them click on links and view posts through a more cluttered interface just so you can have some additional stats or maybe get a bit more ad revenue. I’d guess that a competing blog who had full feeds would quickly gain more readers (just a guess though).
…But take all that with a big grain of salt since I don’t try to make money with my blog, so I’m no expert. :)
Joe @ Escape Job Hell
September 12th, 2007 6:20 am
I don’t even subscribe if it’s a partial feed. If I read a post in it’s entirety in RSS, I’ll usually open it in a browser window anyway, so I can comment. There’s really no benefit to partial feeds. It defeats the whole purpose. I might as well just go back to live bookmarks in firefox (which is lame). I’d also much rather have a full feed with ads than a partial feed without (though that’s a good option to have, I suppose).
Christopher Smith
September 12th, 2007 6:22 am
I absolutely prefer the full feeds version.
For any movie review site, the competition is fierce and I can’t make the mistake of losing potential subscribers if they get tired of having to click through for the additional text. Best to keep my subscription base happy, I say. After all, who knows who they’re sharing my site with?
Kirsten
September 12th, 2007 6:40 am
It would depend on the source. Subscribing to blogs, I much prefer a full feed. Only 2 blogs on my reader have a partial read, and while it annoys me, I tolerate it because they belong to personal friends. Having the full feed actually allows me to read my subscriptions quicker, and in this time-starved world we live in, that’s of the utmost importance to me.
If I were subscribing to news articles, on the other hand, I would probably prefer partial feeds. When I go to major news site or newspaper sites, it’s the headlines that make me decide on whether or not I want to read further, and news sources have been playing the art of the headline for as long as printed newspapers have been available. But, I don’t subscribe to news feeds since the news is so in-your-face as it is, and very easy to find if I need to.
engtech @ internet duct tape
September 12th, 2007 6:48 am
I always end up unsubscribing from partial feeds. It breaks me feed reading flow.
I do still read LifeHacker by visiting the web site, but to be honest that’s the *only* site I do that with. Every other site has lost me as a reader.
I’m a very active commenter, and user of delicious, stumbleupon, reddit and digg so if I’m not reading your site because of partial feeds then you’re missing out on more than just 1 reader. You’re also missing out on access to my word of mouth network.
And that’s true for every potential RSS subscriber out there.
Jason Ryan
September 12th, 2007 7:01 am
Full feeds only, thanks. I have found that, over time, I have unsubscribed the partial feeds. The whole point of blogging is about engagement and furthering the conversation – if you want to do that, then let me access your content…
And I have no problem with ads at the bottom of a full feed – just don’t expect me to open a browser window to see your stuff.
Sephyroth
September 12th, 2007 7:10 am
I also prefer full feeds – I said this on another blog the other day, but when I read a blog that has a partial feed, those items are generally left unread and I’ll put off reading them. It’s nothing to do with the blog or the blogger, it’s just that I can’t get into a post based on the first 250 characters or so.
Of course, then there is one feed that I used to be subscribed to which had more feedflares than actual content in the post – and that included a line telling you that the feed is a partial feed.
Marina @ Sufficient Thrust
September 12th, 2007 7:27 am
In my recent post “How to Read 423 Feeds a Day (and Keep Your Day Job!)” I specifically suggest not subscribing to anything but full feeds. Quite frankly, I don’t have the time to click-through all day long, and I have yet to read any content that can’t be found somewhere else.
I used to enjoy the Freakonomics blog, but the moment they switched to one-sentence feeds (which are nowhere near enough information for me to even decide if the post is of interest or not), I unsubscribed and never went back. I know from discussions on their blog after that decision that a lot of people felt the way I did.
Sunny
September 12th, 2007 7:50 am
I’m a full feed girl. Only a website that has really GREAT value to me (like DPS) will stay on my feedreader if it has a partial feed. I’ve got too much to do to mess with partial feeds. If I want to click through I will. It’s harder to evaluate if I want to read the article on the partial feed.
SingForHim
September 12th, 2007 7:54 am
I vote for full feeds. I actually click through on full feeds more, because I’m interested in the comments and other posts. Most of the time, it’s hard to hook me in the first sentence. Like Kirsten, the only partial feeds I read are good friends.
Mamablogga.com did an good article on this as far as personal blogs go.
Richard
September 12th, 2007 7:58 am
I’m with Gina on this one – while I’ve got nothing against a blog that publishes full feeds my personal preference when reading feeds is excerpts. As a result I prefer blogs that allow readers to choose one or the other.
I’ve also been using the ‘headline’ view on Google Reader lately – although don’t like it as much as partial feeds because it doesn’t give me the all important first sentence or two.
Rhonda
September 12th, 2007 8:01 am
I also use partial feeds on my blog mainly because I got fed up with people scraping my feed. I was spending all day chasing people who were scraping my content, republishing my images and basically stealing my hard work for their own personal gain.
Partial Feeds – Reluctantly
James Pegram
September 12th, 2007 8:19 am
I discussed this on Reality Wired a while back in Why Use Full RSS Feeds. I read a lot of blogs and there is nothing more annoying than having to stop and go to the site and wait for I to load to finish reading something interesting. 9 times out of 10 if that happens I won’t even bother.
The argument about content theft is about as asinine as RIAA’s argument for why they an sue anyone that thinks about listening to music. I understand both sides it just isn’t worth the aggravation it causes readers. If your worried about content theft, hire a lawyer.
elysa
September 12th, 2007 8:23 am
Partial feeds drive me crazy as a reader. I like to visit the blog when I have something to say. I agree that I read more of the content of my full feed blogs than I do of my partial feeds. I find it annoying to click through on each post.
Rebecca
September 12th, 2007 8:41 am
Full feeds please, it really frustrates me when (with limited time) I have to click ‘yet another link’ to finish of a post.
It seems so many people do not write succinctly enough to get their point across in the first few sentences but get going and get good when they finish home with a whole post.
Andy Merrett
September 12th, 2007 8:51 am
“I’m a very active commenter, and user of delicious, stumbleupon, reddit and digg so if I’m not reading your site because of partial feeds then you’re missing out on more than just 1 reader. You’re also missing out on access to my word of mouth network.”
Wow, erm, just… wow. :/
Sean O
September 12th, 2007 9:24 am
I prefer to read partial feeds and that is what I provide on my site.
For those that say the first few sentences are not enough to understand the post I tend to agree with Chris Marshall above. Good writing dictates that the first 100 words or so should be enough to catch my interest or not. When I read a full feed site, I only read the first 2 sentences anyway and if that isn’t good enough then I am on to the next thing. I am a discriminating reader, I only read things that really interest me.
Monetization of feeds is bad. I don’t like them and don’t put my readers through the agony.
Unless you do not want to monetize your site, I think your feeds should be partial.
Thomas Fisher
September 12th, 2007 9:30 am
As a reader and blogger I use and love full feeds.
When a blog publisher forces me to click through I often don’t click at all, though I might have read the post where it in a full feed.
I do not want to do this to my readers. I want my readers reading my posts, if I use a partial feed, they may not read the posts.
-Thomas Flight
Jeffro2pt0
September 12th, 2007 9:43 am
Most feed readers now a days give users the ability to choose how they want to view their subscriptions. The options are typically Full Text, Partial Text, or headlines only. I’ve always told other users of Feedburner to set their Feed to display the full post which would cater to everyone. Let the user decide if they want to see only a partial post or not.
Brian Purkiss
September 12th, 2007 9:56 am
I like reading full (or at least ‘most’) feeds – so I use full feeds.
I like being able to read the post in my feed reader (Safari’s built in), and then click on it if I am interested in reading more.
I am a blogger, so if I can tell that the post shall interest me, I click on the link to make the blogger’s statistics happy.
I then will comment (at least a thanks for the post) if I liked it and/or found it helpful.
When I have the full feed, I am able to browse through the posts with more speed – especially when there are multiple posts for me to read.
I am more likely to remain subscribed to the blog’s RSS when they’re full feeds.
Joni
September 12th, 2007 11:31 am
I use full feeds on my blog because I also want to read full feeds from other blogs. When a blog I’m subscribed to provides partial feeds only, I kinda lose my interest in reading its posts. Later on, I’d probably decide to unsubscribe from it.
I don’t want my readers to think that way (not that I have that many readers, lol).
--Deb
September 12th, 2007 11:56 am
I’m primarily a knit-blogger but this is a topic I’ve seen come up in “recreational” blogging a lot. Huge debates about convenience, theft, all of it. (Though, there’s not so much concern about placement in search results–it’s more about content/ creativity theft.)
Personally, I do partial-feeds solely because I would find my content and my photos reproduced elsewhere without any credit given. I didn’t mind so much the being copied as the fact that my blog wasn’t even referenced as the source, and for a professional blog, that would irk me even more. I’d rather provide full-feeds, but not if entire posts are going to be ripped off.
That said, I personally prefer to read the full-feeds. Although, since I never seem to get reliable results with commenting through any of the RSS readers I’ use, I usually need to click-through to the actual blog anyway, whenever I want to leave a comment.
Rich Minx
September 12th, 2007 11:59 am
Full, not half. I don’t like the ‘feed is half empty’ mentality.
Lindsay (the sailboat guy)
September 12th, 2007 12:16 pm
At the very great risk of proving my obvious ignorance… Where and how does a blogger (me) set full or partial feeds.
I apologize if this is totally dumb, but I have obviously missed this vital info :[
JJ
September 12th, 2007 4:02 pm
BOTH – just read a few scrolls of comments; people feel very strongly about their preference, and bloggers should spend less time jamming up their side columns with junk, and give their viewers what they want: the option to read the feeds the way they want.
Personally, I prefer partials with excellent headlines, and a summary of the post in the first 1-2 sentences. I’ve unsubbed from many feeds because of cruddy headlines, or rambling ledes (foodies are especially bad about this).
Newsniche
September 12th, 2007 4:08 pm
Ahh, the age old debate. Full feeds are more desirable by a majority of readers. But partial feeds are what RSS was really designed for.
RSS feeds are the TV listings of the internet.
Amit Agarwal
September 12th, 2007 6:03 pm
I remain a strong advocate of full text feeds because it makes life of RSS subscribers simple.
But at the same time, I am not too pleased with FeedBurner RSS Advertising ever since they became part of Google.
Anthony Lawrence
September 12th, 2007 9:33 pm
OK, y’all convinced me – I added a “Full” feed.
But: what about FeedBurner? About 400 of my subscribers use FeedBurner and more than 100 of those use email notification – surely they don’t want full feeds, do they??
For the moment, I’ve left it alone.. maybe I’ll do a test on them in a few days and see what kind of reaction I get?
Jonathan Fields
September 12th, 2007 11:33 pm
There’s an interesting lesson here from the world of print journalism and PR. When you submit a news release to wire service, you need to write it so that, should the media who picks it decide to print a truncated version, the reader will still get the story.
So, the entire story is generally embodied within the first paragraph, while the last line is often a tease to read further. If you write your posts with this in mind, you should be able to deliver partial posts in a way that provides enough info to your reader to understand what the story is about and click through to dig deeper into it.
So, I think in the debate over full versus partial, you also really have to factor in “how” you write your posts. Like writing for wire services, if you write specifically with the knowledge that you’ll be using partial feeds, then you can tailor your writing to “make” it work and lead the reader to click through.
Adam
September 13th, 2007 12:16 am
What I find frustrating with is when I click through on a Lifehacker partial feed only to arrive a page that has little more than a summary of another post/resource and a link. So it takes me two clicks to get what I wanted, when I could have easily gotten there from in one from a full text feed. So Lifehacker gets a brief PV from me, but at the cost of creating a irritated reader who may soon unsubscribe from their feed.
Frank
September 13th, 2007 12:16 am
After I realized, that some publisher or companies use my content via RSS to monetize their own website, I offer partial feeds only. I think, it’s important in this case, that headline and first lines of a post should include all relevant informations for the decision: “Click for full post or not.”, like news papers anyway.
As reader it’s all the same to me. I get hundreds news a day. I read headlines only and decide about its first informations to click for full content or not.
Leszek Pawlowicz
September 13th, 2007 2:38 am
It’s my impression from the comments that readers generally prefer full feeds, because it’s more convenient, they don’t have to be bothered with visiting the original site; that’s the added value for them of a full feed. But that argument is based strictly on the desires of the reader; where’s my added value as a blogger from providing the full feed? Readers of the full feed won’t come to my site to see the ads, which help cover the time and costs of my blog. When I tried a full feed for my site, the visitation numbers dropped dramatically, then started rising again when I went back to a partial feed. If I provide a partial feed, then at least some people will come to my site to read the full post. Those who say they won’t visit a site based on a partial feed also won’t visit it based on a full feed, so I don’t really lose anything by providing a partial feed.
People seem to think that bloggers have the obligation to provide their content in whatever format the readers want it in. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to set things up so that if you want to get value from my blog by reading the content, you need to provide a little bit in return by visiting the site. Factor in the issue of feed scraping, and the fact that some people prefer the partial feed, and the choice is clear for my site – partial feeds.
Darren
September 13th, 2007 3:05 am
I think full feeds are much better. I use my feed reader almost like a chaptered book. I like to turn to the chapters that interest me and read articles. A book never asks you to visit a website to read the rest of the chapter. I subscribe so I can get the enjoymenmt of the articles/posts without having to navigate away from one page.
Call me lazy but were all just after the quiet simple life :D.
David
September 13th, 2007 7:25 am
I lean toward partial feeds as most people don’t include “2″ or “3″ sentences – they include 6+. I have lots to read and not much time to read it – so let me know what is happening by just reading the opening news flash/topic.
If you include the whole thing I will end up reading it and then be mad at you for wasting my time and not showing me a quick summery.
If (for some weird reason) I don’t already know most of what they are going to say about that topic – I can just click to view the full post. Because if I don’t already know what they are going to say; then I am interested enough to post a comment – so I will have to get to the site anyway…
Kyle Ingrelli
September 13th, 2007 7:59 am
I’ve been using partial feeds for my sites. I used to have full feeds, but my content was being stolen from virtually every post I made. I don’t like the idea of having my content stolen and re-posted to other sites. Since I switched to partial feeds I’ve had far fewer sites stealing my content. I have been thinking about re-enabling full feeds again, but worry about my search engine placement and content theft.
Anthony Lawrence
September 13th, 2007 9:07 am
Re: stolen content – it gets stolen anyway, the full feed just makes it easier.
Re: lost ad revenue – for me, regular visitors are very unlikely to click on ads anyway – it’s the ones who get there from search who click on ads..
BP
September 13th, 2007 5:03 pm
What about duplicate content issues when search engines spider both XML and HTML versions of the same pages?
I usually go with partial feeds, or just “optional excerpts” so that no content is duplicated between the feeds and on-site content.
Sotek
September 13th, 2007 5:20 pm
There’s no doubt in my mind that full content feed is better. However, both Gina and Rick have a good points. I have to agree with Gina on news sources, such as CNN or BBC. In this case partial feeds seem to work better. I also like the idea (as seen on all Gawker Media sites) of providing both full and partial feeds.
Personally, I’m more likely to subsribe and/or vist a particular website IF there’s a full feed available. I simply don’t have the time for visiting hundreds of websites daily.
As far as traffic… internal linking is a good solution to this problem, just include “filed under..” or “related articles..” links directly in your feed and stop worrying.. pageviews will come.
The Investor
September 13th, 2007 8:13 pm
I think partial feeds can actually make you a better blogger. Why? Because you have to try and create posts that will tempt the reader in. On my new site I’m trying hard to think with headlines and intros how best to draw in the reader.
Deceth
September 13th, 2007 10:04 pm
I definitely think full feeds are better, especially if you are a smaller, less established site. Once you have a solid reputation and good incoming traffic, you can get away with partial feeds, but until then, it’s best that you make your content as accessible as possible!
Softsled
September 13th, 2007 10:31 pm
Netvibes really solves this full feed/partial feed situation for me. I have many feeds I am subscribed to. Some are full feeds and some are partial feeds, but when I want to read more of a partial feed I just click view website and it comes up in an iframe and I can read without leaving Netvibes.
I think the underlying problem is having to leave the application/reader to go to another application. If partial feeds could be expanded to show the full feed, or view the site within the reader, then I think the problem is solved for most readers.
This solves the problem for publishers who choose not to show a full feed because of the monetization/tracking factor. They can feel more confident that the user is going to click through the partial feed when they find it interesting because the content is available directly within their reader.
Siddharth Thakkar
September 14th, 2007 4:11 am
I agree with Rick. I read many blogs (including problogger) directly on my phone via email. Makes my daily commute more enjoyable.
Cheers!
orcmid
September 14th, 2007 4:40 am
I like Softsled’s idea of having an aggregator that will allow easy feed viewing.
Still, I avoid partial feeds unless there is compelling content often enough that I’ll put up with the abbreviated/headline approach (my home town paper is one exception, as is Lifehacker).
For my own site(s), I always do full feeds (which I also subscribe to). It provides a kind of distributed preservation of content, local searchability for myself and for others, and I just want to do it that way. But monetization is not a driving need for me.
Anurag Bansal
September 15th, 2007 2:02 am
I always use full feed. Partial feed is a kind of cheating to the subscription concept itself. You are not giving liberty to your readers to read your post on his own convenience and choice. You are forcing him to visit your page.
I personally unsubscribe to the feed which has partial feeds. I don’t want to read those even if they might have very good content.
I agree with Rick 100%.
Anurag Bansal
http://anuragbansal.blogspot.com
Netvalar
September 15th, 2007 3:50 am
As a reader I prefer partial feeds if I like the story enough I will go to the site. However the really short partials arenot worth me subscribing to as I don’t get enough information to make a decision on rather I want to read it or not. So if a blogger writes mostly short posts full feed is better and if you do partial feeds at least give us 500 characters to decide rather to read the rest.
Ben Licher
September 16th, 2007 10:42 pm
As a reader I prefer full feeds. Like MadHat I don’t read on if I get partial feeds and most of the time I unsubscribe.
So, as a blogger I offer full feeds, I don’t think my software enables the choice, have to check that.
Linking to other articles on my blog drives people to my blog, I hope.
Riscario Insider
September 18th, 2007 1:53 am
Without doing any research, I thought partial feeds were better all around:
- less info overload for readers
- more clickthroughs to my blog
However, I prefer reading full feeds and rarely go to the site. I’m torn.
michael pastor
September 18th, 2007 3:15 am
When the argument comes down to either/or, the answer is *both* and *it depends*. Then you must look for the underlying theory or problem that exists between the dichotomy and design around *that* It’s like the argument between peer-to-peer or client/server – why do I have to make the choice?
slaxh
September 25th, 2007 12:21 am
there is no debate if you had the experience of reading blog via mobile device. the answer definitely should be Full feeds.
Anthony Lawrence
September 25th, 2007 8:40 am
Maybe..
As I commented above, as a result of this conversation, I implemented both full and partial feeds for my main feed and four sub feeds. In all partial feeds, I add a note that Full Text Feeds are now available with a link that takes them to the page that offers all those different feeds.
It’s only been a week so far, but partial feeds have gained subscribers while most full feeds have remained near stagnant.
I’m going to track this for a few months and see what really happens.
Saim Baig
January 2nd, 2008 9:15 am
I recommend full feeds
InsideHoops
January 3rd, 2008 6:39 pm
If you’re running a business, why would you give your full articles away for free in an rss feeder? That’s like running a store, but giving the items away.
Anthony Lawrence
January 3rd, 2008 11:18 pm
@insidehoops
Because the customer is always right?
Wf
January 5th, 2008 8:11 pm
I prefer partial feeds being a reader.
youtubes
January 25th, 2008 1:17 am
Re: stolen content – it gets stolen anyway, the full feed just makes it easier.
Re: lost ad revenue – for me, regular visitors are very unlikely to click on ads anyway – it’s the ones who get there from search who click on ads..
Anthony Lawrence
January 25th, 2008 2:29 am
@youtubes
I think your comment about regulars is mostly correct. Recently I killed advertising in all new posts – ads don’t appear until the post falls out of RSS.
That’s cut my ad income about 10% – but has increased my average page views, and is a nice thing to do for the “regulars”, so I’m going to leave it that way.
WWE Crazy
March 8th, 2008 4:08 am
For me, full feeds is the way to go
Anthony Lawrence
March 8th, 2008 5:18 am
I’ve actually been tracking this for months now.. if at all possible you should have have both full and partial (so that your readers can choose what they prefer).
While more people have chosen full since I started tracking, 30% have chosen partial – even though that’s not the default choice and they have to go out of their way to do so!
The conventional wisdom about this subject appears to be wrong.
Mike
March 8th, 2008 2:47 pm
Full feeds are the only way to go. I won’t waste my time following annoying links from partial feeds.
Anthony Lawrence
March 8th, 2008 11:24 pm
@mike
The point is that while YOU prefer full feeds, other people obviously prefer partial. A website that wants to provide good service to its readers should provide BOTH.
My stats prove it: both options grow every month – and that’s even with people having extra work to choose partial! Obviously some people don’t want full feeds – about 30% at my site.
I think it is both foolish and arrogant to impose your own likes and dislikes on your readers.
Mike
March 19th, 2008 3:31 am
@ Anthony Lawrence
I agree.
Even though I do prefer full feeds, providing both is the best of both worlds since people can choose which they prefer between the two and no one is imposing on readers.
tmosley
April 29th, 2008 1:43 am
I think Rick makes an excellent point on full rss feeds vs. partial. If you rely on advertising to pay the cost associated with blogging you should run ads in the full feed. But I think some publishers want to drive traffic back to their website which is a great for keeping up their ad revenues. But on the other hand I think using services like feed burner and posting full feeds give feed burner opportunities to get more folks to sign up for their services. I suppose testing is the way to go and see what your reader prefer.
Carolina
September 13th, 2008 4:33 am
I have never figured out HOW to tell, when subscribing to a feed, whether or not it is a full or partial feed. I don’t find that out until I try reading it in my reader. I’ve also noticed that some sites begin with a full feed, and then suddenly with no warning they change it to a partial feed. Of course, if it’s one of my favourites, I click on through anyway, but if it’s a good, comment-worthy site (or article) I will click through anyway.
Carolina
September 13th, 2008 4:34 am
Sorry about the awkward sentence structure above. I’m just home from working all night and half the morning.
Marc
March 5th, 2009 3:27 am
Full Article – definitely; I am always on the go and often read the RSS feeds on the train/plane
If a RSS feed is partial then I simply delete the complete feed (e.g. BBC, Motley Fool UK)
Anthony Lawrence
March 30th, 2009 10:55 pm
After 18 months of offering both full and summary feeds, I find that most readers do choose the full feed. However, a significant number do go out of their way to choose the partial.
I think it’s very important to offer choice..
Trigunner
April 8th, 2009 1:11 pm
I’m trying to find ways to improve my feeds and it directed me here at problogger. Most of the articles that I’ve read are in favor of a full feed. This is for the reason that readers prefer to read without having to click on links. This is just my 2 cents :)
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