Full or summary RSS feeds

Sujith
Sujith
from Kerala
13 years ago

This may not be a new discussion in blogosphere but I think here it is new. A recent incident compelled me to start this new thread. We can setup RSS feeds in two ways, full contents in feed or the summery only. Here some advantages and disadvantages of both the methods.

Full post Feed

Advantages :

  • Subscribers need not to visit the blog for reading the post. They will get the whole post in their inbox.
  • Publishers can insert ads along with the feed (Eg: Adsense for feeds)
  • Full post can be embedded with other social bookmarking links such as digg, Twitter, Buzz, Facebookshare etc for further promotion.

Disadvantages:

  • It will reduce the traffic and page views of your blog because readers need not to visit the blog for reading the post.
  • Autoblogging scripts use  feed grabbers, so your whole posts will be displayed in such type of blogs, which can reduce the traffic.

Summary feeds

Advantages

  • If you are publishing many posts in a day, then partial feeds will be suitable because the subscriber may not scroll down the mail for reading all the posts.
  • Can prevent content stealing.
  • You can analyse the popularity of your article through partial feeds. Subscriber will visit the blog, only if the topic is interesting.

Disadvantages

  • Monetization through feed is not possible.
  • Many readers don't like partial feeds, so it can reduce your feed subscription
  • If you are using the feeds as site map, then the search engines can not index the whole contents .
  • Many people dont like partial feeds, this can reduce the subscription

What you think ? Please post your opinion as a reader and a blogger. As a reader I prefer full feeds and as blogger I prefer partial feeds.

Recently I swithced over to partial feeds. Main reason was content theft. It is very sad to see that one blogger in indiblogger network is also using feed grabber to steal my blog contents and shamelessly displaying in his blog without any credit.

 

Edited 13 years ago
Reason: Spelling mistake
Replies 1 to 5 of 5 Descending
Rohini
Rohini
from Bangalore
13 years ago

I have three blogs and I have enabled partial feeds for two of them for all the reasons you have mentioned above. I haven't offered email subscription on them for the same reasons.

 

Mohan
Mohan
from Bangalore
13 years ago

I have enabled full post feed. I don't mind if my blog readers don't visit my blog, they will be able to read it through feeds. If they feel like commenting, they will visit my blog anyways! Monetization is not of prime importance to me. Also, AFAIK - google knows an intelligent way of detecting the copy cats and punishing them severely. 

Just to sum it up, i am happy to provide full post as feed content rather than giving it just as a teaser. I have loyal readers :)

Aashish Sood
Aashish Sood
from Delhi
13 years ago

I have offered full feed and e mail subscription as well... I did not think about things on these lines... dont know how much impact had this had on my readership but could not be much seeing as i dont have much to begin with :D

but thanx Sujith for sharing this very wonderful piece of information!

Sujith
Sujith
from Kerala
13 years ago

I am also in favour of Full posts but after seeing many copies of my contents across the net a second thought came. Moreover I have also subscribed many popular blogs and all of them are setup with partial feeds.

Let me see the impact.

Thanks Mohan and Aashish for sharing your views.

Bipul Islam
Bipul Islam
from Kolkata
13 years ago

Can content stealing be really called a crime..? I am not doing it... but if the person stealing give a link back.. I am happy with whatever he has to do with my content... 

If i take somebody's content I'll always link back....

Not all people are as ethical as I am *(silly winks)*

But among the  bloggers that I know... most of them would be like "RSS who??? " Yeah but if we are interested in traffic... the raised points can be a headache...

@Mohan  Problem is not many people are very interested to comment but are happy to lift other's work.

http://foolwise.wordpress.com

Bipul Islam
from Kolkata
13 years ago

By the blogger I know.. I did not talk of my Indiblogger friends but some others whom I am trying to convince to join Indiblogger


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