Kent Newsome on technology, music and life

2/21/2006


Sorry Duncan, But Steve Does Get It

I really enjoyed The Blog Herald and am sorry that Duncan Riley sold it, but he (or whoever wrote this post) is simply wrong.

Just because no one has devised a profitable way to cram a bunch of RSS ads down our throats is no excuse for partial RSS feeds. Particularly when we can read another paper that provides full feeds.

Matter of fact, I suspect that part of the reason why RSS ads don't work is because (a) no one clicks on them, and (b) the advertisers know that. Just because they don't work the way publishers wish they would is no excuse for forcing readers to the web site for the full story.

Newspapers who understand this will provide full feeds and take readers from those who don't.

As Steve says, in the future, "we will look back and laugh how quaint it was that we received our news on dead trees."

We will also think it quaint that publishers tried to drag us back to their ad-infested web sites by dangling half of an article in front of us.

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Posted by Kent @ 2/21/2006 09:20:00 PM | Permalink

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3 Comment(s):

Kent, these are good thoughts. I appreciate learning your views on the full/partial debate. I'm still painfully sitting on the fence on this one!

Printed newspapers resemble partial RSS feeds in that the reader frequently must go to another page to read the rest of an article. I've never minded having to switch pages, as long as the rest of the newspaper article is easy to find. So I suspect that many RSS users don't mind partial feeds because they're already used to that pattern. At least that might be another factor to consider.

Do you know of any studies that have asked what percent of RSS users prefer full feeds? I'm interested in learning more about the current trends on this issue.

By Blogger Easton Ellsworth, at 2/22/2006 7:12 PM  
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Big day, Kent.

Two posts on the Memeorandum front page, and a link from Scoble.

Way to go.

By Anonymous Russell Limprecht, at 2/22/2006 9:31 PM  
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Just wanted to say thanks Kent!

When I first started blogging, you and Scoble convinced me that my readers would appreciate full feeds, so that's all we've ever had.

I shouldn't have been surprised when we got unsolicited thanks for having full feeds - it matters to our readers.

Traffic has been growing, both in the feed and on the website. I believe that the full feed is helping the growth.

Our main tactic to get RSS readers to the site is relevant cross-linking. We have a tight niche, and when there is relevant content, it gets linked within our posts.

60% of our readers read multiple pages per visit. This number used to be 70%, but as our google hits go up, transient visits are making up a higher proportion of the traffic.

Anyway, thanks!

Scott

ps: We do adsense on the site, not in the feed - and it's growing too. People shouldn't freak about full feeds cutting out revenue.

By Blogger Scott Sehlhorst, at 2/23/2006 8:17 AM  
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