Truncated RSS Feeds Really Stink.
Posted by: tony on 07/28/2007 04:54 PM
Updated by: tony on 07/28/2007 07:45 PM
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Expires: 08/28/2007 12:00 AM
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I'm a blog reading junkie. There, I said it. I consume lots of blogs on a daily basis. I use a feed aggregator called GreatNews to read my feeds offline. One of the things I run into is blogs and news sites which truncate their feeds to force the reader to click through to their site.
This is one of my pet peeves of blog reading.
To those who do this... I download your feed specifically because I want to read your words of wisdom. All of them. I don't mind if you link to an outside site to give attribution to a quote you might be commenting on. I can mark it for follow up later if I want to look at it, and in some cases, I find a neat new blog to add to my feed reader. I have to say, though, if I open up a feed and I see something like this...
We invite you to leave or not come at all
Thu, Jul 26 2007 12:24 AM by Jeff
From Fr. Tran at St. Mary's by the Sea in the Diocese of Orange: Regarding the Tridentine Mass at our...
I am going to delete your feed, and not bother to read it any more.
So what did Fr. Tran write? I'm left with a cliffhanger. It leaves me not with a desire to click through and read it, but to just delete the feed and be done with it. Just for the record, I love Jeff's site, The Curt Jester. I link it on my sidebar, and I'd like to read it every day, but unfortunately it is not "offline reader friendly" so I have to pass.
Ed Kohler, from Technology Evangelist writes:
Dear media sites:
I am so tired of truncated RSS feeds.
Why do you continue to work under the assumption that you're better off forcing people to click through to read blog posts or news stories rather than allowing them to read content within their feed readers?
This is wrong.
Why?
Because you're making life difficult for your most loyal and vocal readers. People subscribing to your RSS feed are reading everything you publish. Everything. That is, if you don't truncate your feed.
They're also the people who are most likely to have blogs, which means they're the most likely to link to or embed your content in their site after reading it.
Do you really want to make life difficult for them?
Amen. This has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time, and I'm sure I'm going to tick people off. Also, if you are purposefully truncating your feed for whatever reason, I'm not so arrogant to think that you're going to think: "ooooooh... Tony will stop reading me, I'd better change!". I just want to express my feelings and let you know that in addition to forcing people to click through, you are alienating a substantial group of people who may really enjoy your commentary, but don't believe it's worth the effort.
Ed Concludes with:
As I understand it, the mindset leading to RSS feed truncation is, "we get more hits if we force people to click through." And this is absolutely true . . . in the short term. If I truncated Technology Evangelist's feed today, I'd surely see a spike in traffic from our feed tomorrow.
This mindset needs to change. Focusing on short term hits over longer term benefits that come from links and embeds is a foolish move. If your online content isn't easily consumable, sharable, and conversational, it's something close to dead.
Backing up for a second, this all assumes that the content being created is WORTH consuming, sharing, and talking about. If not, you have bigger problems that need to be addressed.
Longer term, easily consumable content will generate more links to your site, which will each generate click through visitors to the ads you're trying to serve.
Which will lead to more people hopping on your RSS feeds.
Which will lead to more people reading and sharing your content.
Which will lead to more links to your site.
Which will lead to higher search engine rankings.
Which will lead to more unique visitors stumbling upon your site to see your ads.
And we'll all live happily ever after.
Indeed. We all like a healthy readership. Some of us like meaningful conversation. If not we would not make our words of wisdom available on the internet.
I'm sure there are some cases where the blog owner doesn't realize their site is feeding truncated articles. You should click on that little RSS button that you are showing and take a look at what is displayed. Is it the whole article, or is it just a line or two?
If it's the whole article, you're golden. If it's a line or two, and you'd like to change it, look up the help on your blog software to find out how to adjust it. If you'd like my help, drop me a line and I'll be happy to do the research for you and explain how to do it. I might even write up updates to this article addressing the major blog platforms.
It will be a public service to the whole RSS reading community.
Update: Jeff informed me that his Atom feed has a full feed. I'll be adding it back into my GreatNews reader. Thanks Jeff.
And yeah, I'm sorry. I should have asked.
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