Are Full Feeds Evil?
Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Good news everyone! Since Blogsolid launched in August, the number of RSS subscribers has steadily been growing. October has seen the subscribership pass the 200 mark. This is a humble achievement, but as we all know, growing your subscriber-base is important for any blog. Subscriber figures are an indication of how many (or few) loyal readers you have.
An interesting observation is that as the subscriber count for Blogsolid has been growing, visits to the site have been on the decline. During the past week, visitor numbers have been lower than subscriber numbers every day - on some quieter days up to 50% less! So what has caused this shift?
I believe that the answer lies in the fact that Blogsolid offers full feeds.
Blogs usually offer RSS feeds in one of three different ways:
- Full Feeds
Each article appears in its entirety. - Partial Feeds
Only post titles appear. Sometimes these are accompanied by a short excerpt from the article. - Choice
Offer both and let your readers decide which feed they prefer.
Full feeds vs. partial feeds has long been a popular discussion among bloggers. A recent poll by ProBlogger reveals that the overwhelming majority of participating bloggers support full feeds, yet in reading comments it is interesting to note that some people claim to prefer partial feeds.
Let’s take a quick look at some pros and cons of full feeds:
Good
- Full feeds grow your subscriber base.
- DailyBlogTips quotes Matt Cutts of Google saying full text RSS gets more loyal readers.
- Darren Rowse of ProBlogger says:
The debate over full versus partial feeds rages on but my own findings having made the switch to full feeds here at ProBlogger is that my subscriber numbers went up significantly in the weeks after giving my readers my full posts.
- Full feeds are convenient to read on mobile devices.
- TechDirt argues that Full feeds offer complete information that can be scanned, read and understood without having to “read more”.
- This creates an opportunity for further reach since a reader may forward it to a friend or post it on a social network.
- It is possible to monetise full feeds effectively through advertising.
Bad
- Fewer visitors to your site. Subscribers can read your blog content in feed aggregators without ever visiting your website
- Full feeds are susceptible to content scraping.
- Although full feeds offer complete content, readers have to scan an entire article to see if they are interested in reading it instead of being offered a short excerpt summarising the post.
- Full feeds can do some funny things to layout elements such as your pictures and pullquotes.
As a designer, I have come to the conclusion that full feeds are the devil! Although content is king, I believe the design of a site is very important because it creates a visual context adding value to content. Content is robbed of the website’s context when read in a sterile black-on-white feedreader and so, runs the risk of losing value and impact.
So, where to from here? Two possibilities come to mind: switch to partial feeds and regain site visitors or keep the full feeds and grow the subscriber base…
sbpoet Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 12:36 am
Full feeds, please.
Is the point to be read, or to count visits?
I read you!
adam Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 3:13 am
+1 @sbpoet
the content has to be pretty damn good for it to be worth subscribing to an excerpt-only feed. also, stats show that excerpted feeds don’t increase clickthrough rates. if you don’t show people the whole content, you just lose eyeballs, you don’t gain anything.
Memo Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Your update rate is awful and you blame the RSS feeds? Really, you update irregularly enough that is obvious why people prefer reading you through their RSS client. Start updating more often (or more regularly) and maybe your visit-count will increase as it seems from this post that’s the only thing you care about.
Besides, I’m not sure about you but after visiting a site, I can actually remember how the design looked. I don’t need to check it up every time I read an article from a site.
Bush Makcel Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 5:49 am
I think if you don’t care about page impressions, go with full because I think you won’t upset as many ppl with that. Plus, if someone wants to comment, the obviously still can. Did that make sense?
Blogsolid Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Hi sbpoet. Readers are the life blood of blogs, so full feeds stay!
Adam, I also read that somewhere… I find it interesting that excerpts don’t promote clickthroughs. Seems like people are getting too lazy to even click these days :)
Hi Memo. You see, it’s a vicious cycle - work keeps me too busy to blog more, so the answer is to make money blogging, but for that I need more subscribers and my update rate is so awful that I won’t get more… I quit! :)
Bush, you’re right. If people wish to interact on the site they will probably leave the comfort of their feedreaders and drop by.
Bikram Says:
October 30th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Partial feeds for my site. No two words.
Man, I’ve designed it with so much passion, if you don’t even see it, then wat’s d use? ;)
Armen Says:
November 7th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Full feeds, or there’s little point. The benefit of RSS is for the visitor, not the author, so to give partial feeds is to place the purpose of RSS back into the hand of the author, not the visitor.
I visited this site when it was all over the galleries. However, after a while it was rarely updated, so I drifted off. Maybe in the coming days, you may gain the confidence of the initial visitors again.
ixley Says:
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:11 pm
I’ve only recently started using a feed reader regularly and I still have trouble keeping up with all the content I like to browse. I certainly acknowledge that in many cases, full content feeds are more convenient, though many times I prefer to browse article titles and then click through to the site to read (assuming it’s a nicely designed site). I don’t see any advertising on your site, so what do page visits actually matter? People will explore what they want and if full feeds are enough, then it’s probably better for both parties. If advertising is an issue, many blogs offer partial feeds w/o ads and full feeds with. Seems fair to me.
Elle Says:
November 24th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
I really hate partial feed and that’s why I tend to delete those blogs from my reader as soon as I notice that… and with no regrets.
(:
Blogsolid Says:
November 24th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
I love the fact that there are so many passionate opinions on the topic of feeds!
Mark Eagleton Says:
November 28th, 2007 at 7:18 am
The graphic you made for this entry is entirely bad ass.
mojaam Says:
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Full feeds for the win. I love well designed websites, but time is almost always scarce so when going down my feeds via bloglines, I get to save some time. Some sites I remember for having a great design and will revisit it for the sake of seeing it again. Also, if the content is really interesting, readers will want to look at other people’s comments or comment themselves. Also, as an avid social bookmarker, finding good content fast leads you to read at the direct link since that’s what you will be submitting. It’s a good thing!
?X Says:
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 am
Full feeds, please.
Is the point to be read, or to count visits?
I read you!
Jorged Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I came to your blog because of the Design and found interesting content, now your blog is in my feed catcher.
Anyway, I think content is more important than count visits, but if you´re more worried about visits, creating quality content is a way to get it. Maybe is a combination of both: create great content and Take care of your design and the links to your site will come from everywhere.