The subscriber to my RSS feed will have noted they’re now getting the full, non-lite, verbose version of my posts here. This represents a change in policy, if not a change in heart about RSS’s limitations.
Reasons? I stated my problems with full text RSS feeds a couple of years ago. But at least some of my concerns are now addressable; Feedburner lets me count subscriptions for ego purposes, and I don’t make any money from the site anyway, so driving people through to the HTML page matters less. Moreover, some crazy-eyed optimists insist that my pageviews will actually go up through offering a full text feed.
I’ve still got concerns over interaction; the comments left on this blog are the stuff I enjoy most, the greatest reward for writing it, and I’d be sad to do anything to discourage those. So let’s see. To give the full feed a head start, I’m doing this now, when the site’s riding high (in its own, very small, way) thanks to some big link love over the last week or so (blogging about blogging, or blogging about Technorati, remain profitable pursuits for the pageview-hungry blogger, I can confirm).
I’ll continue my sporadic, drip… drought… drip approach to blogging over the next few weeks, then perform some fiendish MBA-boy statistical analysis (once I dig out my stats textbook again) and we’ll find out if this theory carries.
I’m such a nerd that I actually gave a little whoop yesterday morning when I read your feed on my BlackBerry and realized it was FULL AND COMPLETE. I owe you a pint for this.
Rah! There’s a beer in it already? Thanks Jackie. This is going very well indeed
I read RSS on the train. Having full-text means I actually read the entries. If one has excerpts only, what usually happens is that I click through on to the article, read it, find it a disappointing waste of (very limited, mobile phone) bandwidth and promptly unsubscribe.
Thanks for the full feed, you know it makes sense. Just had to comment to show that you still get interaction. Full feeds are essential for mobile reading, I use NewsGator Go!, as it syncs with the online version and FeedDemon on the desktop.
Like Tom, I was so grateful to have *something* to read on the train today waiting for my brother to get back to me on the mobile. Thanks to the full feeds my thirst was quenched
all of my family are direct desendants of the MacIntosh clan.
We live in the US, and our last name is now just Tosh.
Ah, the light, you see it. Thing is that you get the comments because people who read on RSS can decide whether they want to come over and leave one – rather than being left hanging and thinking “I wonder if the rest of that post made it worth commenting on?”
I did send Emily and, I thought, yerself an email ages ago about how one could use paid-for RSS for fun and, well, profit. I could dig it out if you’d like.
All you need to add now: a comments RSS feed. WordPress has it by default..