Starting Today, Full RSS Feeds
A little change of pace from the normal Sunday flashbacks for a small announcement.
Following last Saturday night's seminar in Seattle, I enjoyed a great after-hours discussion with a group of the site's readers about a wide range of topics. These sessions are always my favorite part of the seminars. Other than the big dance number at the end of each day's session, of course.
(Shhhh, don't give it away for the new folks.)
One of the topics that came up was partial vs full RSS feeds (I am currently set at partial) and we talked about the plusses and minuses therein. I remember that Eric, Ted and Duncan were particularly in favor of the full feeds. Pointed me to some good research, too. (We had some real web horsepower in this group. Aaron, from Google was there, too. That guy is scary smart.) Great conversation.
My position: Sure, as a reader I prefer full feeds. But as a publisher, well, if you can see the whole thing in your RSS reader, why visit the site? It'll kill my traffic. Which is essentially what feeds my kids.
Reader position: Trust us. We've seen your kids. They can miss a couple of meals. (No, kidding.) Their position was that it is the the right thing to do WRT readers, espcially people who aggregate blogs in feeders and then read them offline. Eric reads on the ferry into town, for instance. Besides, they said, you are more likely to turn up on the radar of the web's A-list influencers, which can potentially lead to good things. Robert Scoble doesn't do partial, they say.
So, readers win, conditionally at least. Given that traffic has been growing like crazy lately, now is as good a time as any to give it a try. I will give it two months and revisit it after looking at the numbers. If online traffic is down only moderately after that time, I'll stay with full feeds. But if traffic totally falls off a cliff, I will probably go back to partial feeds.
Let's see what happens.
If you are a feed-reader, let me know if this is really important to you. And if you are an RSS power user, I would love to know how you choose to make use of the new full feeds. I am sure many of the site's other readers would like to learn more about RSS'ing form the Teds and Duncans and Erics and Aarons and the like.
(You can subscribe to Strobist via Feedburner at any time by clicking on the link at upper right on the sidebar, or by clicking here.)
Following last Saturday night's seminar in Seattle, I enjoyed a great after-hours discussion with a group of the site's readers about a wide range of topics. These sessions are always my favorite part of the seminars. Other than the big dance number at the end of each day's session, of course.
(Shhhh, don't give it away for the new folks.)
One of the topics that came up was partial vs full RSS feeds (I am currently set at partial) and we talked about the plusses and minuses therein. I remember that Eric, Ted and Duncan were particularly in favor of the full feeds. Pointed me to some good research, too. (We had some real web horsepower in this group. Aaron, from Google was there, too. That guy is scary smart.) Great conversation.
My position: Sure, as a reader I prefer full feeds. But as a publisher, well, if you can see the whole thing in your RSS reader, why visit the site? It'll kill my traffic. Which is essentially what feeds my kids.
Reader position: Trust us. We've seen your kids. They can miss a couple of meals. (No, kidding.) Their position was that it is the the right thing to do WRT readers, espcially people who aggregate blogs in feeders and then read them offline. Eric reads on the ferry into town, for instance. Besides, they said, you are more likely to turn up on the radar of the web's A-list influencers, which can potentially lead to good things. Robert Scoble doesn't do partial, they say.
So, readers win, conditionally at least. Given that traffic has been growing like crazy lately, now is as good a time as any to give it a try. I will give it two months and revisit it after looking at the numbers. If online traffic is down only moderately after that time, I'll stay with full feeds. But if traffic totally falls off a cliff, I will probably go back to partial feeds.
Let's see what happens.
If you are a feed-reader, let me know if this is really important to you. And if you are an RSS power user, I would love to know how you choose to make use of the new full feeds. I am sure many of the site's other readers would like to learn more about RSS'ing form the Teds and Duncans and Erics and Aarons and the like.
(You can subscribe to Strobist via Feedburner at any time by clicking on the link at upper right on the sidebar, or by clicking here.)
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Posted at 10:33 PM.
64 Comments:
I read your feed in Google Reader daily. Love the convenience of it - glad you are going to full feeds.
If you setup your feed on feedburner you can still track the traffic of blog reader readers - it works for my blog. Hope that helps.
Love your blog.
Love the full feeds. Often I don't read the entire post because I'm on the road and don't want to click through ... so definitely I'll be reading more.
Well Dave, I am becoming a pretty powerful feed/RSS user using a new Windows Live Mail, it helps me get my information, faster and easier. Unluckily for all my other feeds, their feed displays a copy (read only) of the web-page. Lucky for you, I enjoy dropping by (love the dark layout) and has disabled this feature . So you're still getting my traffic. In fact, you've got quadrupole in the past two minutes since I clicked "view online" 4 times by accident. My question is, what's the difference now that you're doing Full on RSS, and will i have to re-subscribe for those settings to kick in?
Frank
I'll put in my vote for full feeds as well. I'll often pull up the RSS feed to read your latest Strobist post on my iPhone. Often, I'll go back and re-read them from work or home to get the extra flavor (embedded video, bigger than a postage stamp example photos, etc.)
The text of the posts is great, but it's the examples and such (which RSS doesn't pick up, I think) which makes your blog really rock (and I'm not just saying that).
-Steve
PS - I'm hoping to get to the NYC photoshelter.com seminar Sept 14 (my registration is in) so perhaps I'll get the chance to buy you a beer in thanks for all the knowledge you've shared so far.
I do prefer the full RSS feeds. It helps me determine if I want to read all the post now or wait until later. I do think that it'll decrease some page views on your site, but if you need the extra hits for advertisers, include an advertising section at the bottom of the feeds, or even in the middle.
Yes, some people find these annoying, but you get your message out. Those that want full feeds get their full views and your sponsors still get the exposure they want. Maybe even more if some people, like me, who have been reading your blog for a long time don't always look at the Sunday Flashbacks.
And again I want a seminar near Nashville!!!!!! .....please :)
Half of the story is in the photos. I use a reader, and the partial feed gives me enough of the story to know whether it is something I want to click over to the site to see.
Even with a full feed, I'll be clicking over to see the pics. If you are concerned, just make sure the blog entry references a diagram or photo, etc.
As long as you don't start the partial feed with "AP is now reporting . . . " and then cut it off, either way is cool by me.
Oh thank you, thank you for full feeds!
In my fead-reader I just do not have the time to follow a link to an article I'll skim over and may not even be interested in.
Full feeds rule!
Monetize it! I'd much rather the an add in an RSS feed in a full article than to see an abbreviated article
Regardless of the feed type, I will still continue to come to the site simply because I like what you do and want you to be successful at it. I will not impose my circumstances on you now that I know that you need the traffic. After all, isn't everyone in a hurry these days? I really don't see why others can't be courteous in the same manner since it takes the same amount of time to read the blog whether you read from a feed or off of the website.
I prefer partial feeds - title and an opening paragraph telling me if the post is interesting. I aggregate a bunch of blogs together, and the page tends to become veerrryyy long with full feed posts.
How about creating two feeds? One full-length for those that want it, and one partial like the one you used to have? Everybody is happy; everybody wins (except for your kids of course - point them to the exciting opportunities in the fast-food industry).
This is GREAT! I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to click the unsubscribe button in my Google Reader when I see that partial feed. If it weren't for the great content I would have done it long ago. I think by showing the full feed you expose more of you content and increase the chances of someone clicking through to your site.
I do welcome this. Since i probably have missed alot of your posts. I think you may loose som traffic and gain some.
Even so one should take control of the feed making it commersial too. I know some people will hit the roof but since some started to aggregate the feeds you should add som commersials in the feed that way you have control over the commersial side of your blog.
Also you will be more interesting to place ads at since you reach a wider audience. Both the blogvisitors and the feedreaders.
I'm one of the full-feeders. I was considering unsubscribing yesterday because, given the number of feeds I read, it was too much of a hassle to click through for full content each time. (The reason having nothing to do with the actual content of the blog.)
I think I'll stay now. Thanks for this!
I'm the one who prefers the full feed. If you're setting it to partial feed, and I am not interested in the topic after first few sentences, I never make it to the web-site, and I don't read the whole post anyway. I'll admit, this was the case with few of your posts, though I am a big strobist fan. If the setting is set to the full feed, I'll read the whole post anyway, whether I am interested in it or not. So I think it's a good idea to keep it to full. You have enough content on your web-site that I am going back to it regardless, and if you want your readers to visit the site more often, just include clickable links.
w00t! :) I'll punch through now and then anyway to make sure that I contribute some positive numbers to the stats.
Great, thanks for going to full feeds! I follow all your posts, and this makes my life much easier. :-)
Keep up the wonderful work,
James
Like carl said. The photos will bring the traffic.
For what it's worth, I still clicked through to your page from the RSS feed.. I think it's because the RSS reader is only half screen, and it's black text on white. The articles are nicer to read on your site. And I get the photos here too.. extra bonus.
I also want to say, thank you for having tasteful ads; minimal animation, no glaring colours and doesn't grab attention from the site. I really, really appreciate that. When I can afford my MPEX and amazon orders, I will _certainly_ buy them from your affiliate links.
I definitely prefer the full feeds. I read in Google Reader and get everything (including the pictures) there. Much easier for me the reader!
Here's some food for thought: you often post multiple articles per day and when I see that in my reader I only click through once anyway. So chances are your clicks will not drop as much as you might have suspected...
I'm glad you decided to do that, David.
May your feed act on your content like a big reflector, salvaging some of the rays that would have become part of the chaos that is the world and putting them back into The Big Picture. May your children eat more meals and have even more to spare. May you discover the joys of feed advertising.
I have to vote for partial feeds. The way I prefer to operate in Google reader is to breeze through hundreds of items, opening the interesting ones in new tabs as I run through them. As such, I only really need a taste of what the article is about, with full feeds it just takes more space in Google reader. Plus I like reading the article against the black background of your site better.
Sweet! Thank you so so much.
I have a LOT of feeds, and the partial ones are the ones that get culled when I get overloaded. They just don't fit into my "flow". I need to leave my feed reader to go get the full contents, and sometimes I forget it's there and never get back to it. Also, on my iphone, I'd rather have it all right there.
It's not a matter of "where" or "how" I consume a feed, but all the "wheres" and "hows". Full feeds make that possible.
I tend to read your blog in Google Reader (like I just did), but end up clicking on the link to see if there's any images that the reader didn't publish (again, like I just did).
I also like clicking on the link to the blog to remind me of what site the post came from. The name of the blog doesn't stick but the layout, fonts, and color schemes help remind me of where I'm reading delicious bloggingness (like yours!)
Thank you for going full RSS!
I have about 80 RSS subscriptions in my Google Reader which I read daily. But I noticed that only full RSS posts get my full attention, simply because they are longer and I can skim more of the content to decide if I want to read the article or not. When I find the post interesting I'll load the blog in another tab, so that I can read it later while I finish checking my feeds. Therefor you still get my traffic, but it makes it a lot easier for me to keep up with the www. ;)
I like full feeds - definitely....
I've been a little slack recently, and have only been reading the whole posts if the introduction really grabs my attention. However, with the full feed, I'll be reading a lot more, and, hopefully, getting myself a lot more involved with things...
I've been subscribed to your RSS feed for a while, but haven't been reading much of your content, for one principal reason: the truncated feeds.
The article summaries that appeared in the old feeds never attracted me at all, and so I never bothered to click through to read your content, which is, in fact, really quite interesting (!). Seeing the most recent posts appear in full in my feed-reader this morning reminded me of how interesting yoru content actually is.
My mode of feed reading tends to be to scan the content in my feed reader, and to open articles that interest me in a new tab in Firefox. So, I am still 'clicking through' though not with the primary intention of seeing your ads so much as just being able to read the content at leisure.
Thanks for the full feeds!
I use Wizz RSS within Firefox. It lives in the sidebar, and clicking on the updated feed takes me right to your site.
Hi David,
I was teaching one of my Master Classes here in Cincinnati around April 2006. I always ask for the students' favorite sites. The Stobist was one of the sites. I have been following and enjoying you site ever since.
After chatting with Scott Kelby, I recently turned "blogger" myself and am enjoying the process and learning "ropes" as they say. Thanks for the info on the feed burners - your remarks and the comments have been very helpful.
Continued Success to you, David Ziser
Yay for full feeds.
I must be dense...but I have no idea was a feed or an RSS is...I just log on to my computer, type in your website and read. So whatever you are doing now is fine with me.
I read by feed. I hate abbreviated feeds. I don't click on banner ads so I wasn't feeding your kids anyhow. I'm glad for the change. THANK YOU!
doubleplusgood! It just doesn't make sense when the post would refer to a photo and the photo wouldn't be in the feed reader. You can still bring traffic in to links within your own site, such as referencing each related article when a story is posted, ala make. this will keep the traffic flowing to the full webpage i think.
As a user of Mozilla Thunderbird, I'm actually not seeing any difference; I consistently got the whole article every time previously, and I still do.
Partial or Full RSS feeds don't matter to me.
I load Strobist and a bunch of other sites onto multiple tabs every time I open my browser.
I prefer to go to the site daily and see what is going on.
RSS is great for some things, It just doesn't work for me when it comes to the Strobist site.
Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
Thank you. I hate partial feeds. That has been like the only annoying thing about this site. So this is a great thing.
Personally, I enjoy this site immensly. However, I find that having the snipped gives a so-called power-user who's always on the move the ability to quickly view and reject what I do and don't want to see. If it catches my eye, I'll visit. If it's not my thing, I won't.
I don't want my blackberry wasting time downloading entire posts if I'm just going to bin them. Keep the traffic to your site, keep the blurbs not the blobs in your RSS.
USD $0.02
N
P.S. My website is a false site to help catch spamming scum via Project Honey Pot.
Hello,
Im reading your feed aswell. What some other sites do is have 2 feeds. One short feed without ads, and one full-feature with ads. I like chosing.
Hey Dave, Thanks for the Full feeds. I like the full feeds if I'm in a rush, but 9 out of 10 times, I click through to the site because I look at more content then just that days post. I check every day if I can or every other day. I have a post-it note full of questions that I write down and lookup while on your blog anyway, so I'm usually there for a good amount of time. I also like the grey background and white text, it's easier on my eyes, or so it seems. Keep up the great work.
I am seriously devoted to full feeds. I read multiple blogs and I was up to 90 unread RSS articles this morning (with 15 left over from yesterday) before I started scanning. (Sundays and weekends tend to be low volume, I usually pick up 200 unread articles on a typical weekday.)
I do delete individual articles in my feeds, and some, like Strobist, I leave even if I don't get to them right away. I am of a "collect the whole set" mind with regard to Strobist.
The biggest advantage of full articles is that I can find their content by searching on my local machine, I can scan quickly and stop when I am ready, I can mark for future follow-up, etc. I use all of those techniques.
I do subscribe to some partial feeds (a local newspaper for one) but I also rapidly delete a lot of those articles never to be looked at again.
For Strobist, there is always a reason to come to the full article at some point - it is to look at the pictures (which do not pass into my feed) and sometimes to scan through the comments. I suspect the ongoing content deluge should reveal that many people do choose to come to the web page.
Definitely love the full feeds. That really helps me out (feed reading via Bloglines -- it rocks). The more people really read all the posts, the more they will refer others... thus building your overall user base. Plus, if someone wants to review all the 101 or 102 assignments or archives... they need to go to the site anyway. It's all good!
Dude, I don't even read your blog, and I'm happy you switched to full text. I showed up here because I read Ted's blog and he linked to this post. Partial feeds are an abomination.
As other people have observed, you can put ads in the rss if you're worried about feeding the kids. I'm not personally a big fan of that, but it's a lot better than a partial feed.
Love the blog - even more so now that you have full RSS feeds.
Partial feeds are annoying, too much of a teaser and often I'm not able to click through due to circumstances like reading on a mobile phone, etc.
Please continue the full feeds, it makes it MORE likely that I'll click through to get the extras.
Thanks again!
I'm a reader that will only read sites that have an rss feed.
I don't particularity mind a partial feed if the intro paragraph is strong enough to make a point and draw me in, if it's rambling or cuts off mid-sentence I'll probably just skip it. Also if I feel I might benefit from what the community says in the comments I'll also make the jump to see what's said.
And now that that I think about it I almost prefer partials because I hate getting stuck reading a super long post when I'm in skim-mode, it breaks my flow and I feel like I have to commit to something prematurely.
And I like chocolate ice cream the best.
Well, just trying to help!
what the heck is an rss feed? I just want to talk about lighting.
43 comments is hard to read through so this may have been said but readers typically prefer full feeds and can often set their reader to partial if they don't.
As for site traffic, there are various ways to keep that up. Internal links with in the posts and links to related topics at the end of the post.
Also, offer something besides the posts to attract readers. Like a forum or gallery or free candy.
OFF TOPIC
David, I just wanted you to know about a site I have been looking at for about a year and getting great inspiration. Its dpchallenge.com. There are a lot of great shots there. You've talked about keeping a file with great pics in it. This just might be a good place to look (besides Flickr!!). Keep up the good work!!
Long time lurker (relatively, anyway), first time commenter....
I really appreciate your move to full feeds. For me, at least, having the full feed will make it more likely that I'll jump to the site, especially given the images that are frequently a part of the posts. With the partial feeds, you had to have me at "hello", and if I was in a crunch for time, the click-through likely suffered.
With a full feed, I can scan it quickly, figure out if it's something I need (it usually is), and figure out how to make the time for reading the post.
From where I sit, it's a great move.
I love the full feeds! I'm another Google Reader user and I have to say, I'm more apt to get sucked in to a post if it's a full post, rather than a snippet. Just seeing all the information you have to offer makes me more likely to come back to the source for more information. Plus, a full post makes it more likely that I'll share it with someone else!
Full feed keeps me coming back. I primarily shoot sports but I've turned on a couple of young, talented photographers in my region who are regulars now. I'll also bite the bullet in the next few months on a couple of your light kit suggestions and your sponsors are where i'll start my shopping.
I read several blogs on RSS, using Google Reader. I do prefer the full feed, mostly because I often read on my Palm device, and it's just easier to not have to leave the Google page.
For your page, however, I think I'm probably going to keep following that link to your page. As several people have pointed out, this is in part because the images are often important to the article. But in addition, I often get quite a bit from reading the comments from other readers.
So, for me, the full feed is convenient but I think I'll still end up coming to your page a lot of the time.
I love the Firefox Live Bookmark and it only reads the titles, so either way is fine.
Thanks! Though almost everything i still read at your page. :)
Thanks for putting up full feeds. I've unsubscribed from blogs before because the partial feeds annoyed me. With Strobist, I like it enough that I'll subscribe and read it no matter what. When I'm on the fence about a blog (I read tons of them and regularly have to cull the list), the partial feeds always get the axe first.
I wonder if you couldn't offer both. I read numerous feeds in Google Reader, and I actually prefer partial feeds because they're easier to parse when I have hundreds of new items. I also find myself missing a website's layout if I only see its content via full feeds.
i use a feed reader, and i rarely click through to the site on partials unless the title really interests me.. i prefer the full version, and usually end up reading every post.
I unsubscribed from the Freakonomics blog when they went partial last week.
I have more content than I can consume. My feed reader helps me manage it. Partial feeds do little but tease me and occasionally break my concentration while I wait for the page to load. I like my reader's consistent UI better too. Ergonomics win!
(I've been subscribed to your feed for a while, but mostly blow past it because to the partials. I nearly unsubed it too... thanks for the change.)
Really happy to see the move over to full feeds - I hope it lasts. Thanks, David!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I use Google Reader and I love to see you updating every day, in truth, you are my most often updated feed, statistically.
But I'd rather prefer small notes, which I can sort out, and then I click on most interesting for me and visit your site.
With full feed it takes more time to sort out.
I am very grateful to all your work and dedication! go on...
I definitely prefer full content feeds, your feeds only showed up as titles before so I am sure it increased the number of hits on your site because readers would have to visit the site just to find out what the post was about. Example: "What, Nothing on the Bottom?" That could be anything...
Thanks for adding your content to the feeds.
I don't mind partial content feeds as long as there is enough text in the feed to let me know what the post is about. Title-only feeds aren't very good at all, though.
I think there is a possibility of someone using your feed to post all of your content on their site but if this happens, please switch to a partial-content feed, not back to title-only.
I cant say thanks enough simply for showing more than just the post title. Damn what an awful tease that was. I spend most of my time out in the world without internet, so RSS feeds are the only way i can keep up with sites during the week.
Add in my vote for full feeds. I still visit the site whenever i have a chance, usually going deep in to the archives to catch up on all kinds of stuff ive missed from the past.
Thank you!!
Full RSS feeds are great. Your blog gets blocked and now I can read the RSS at work and know what I have to look forward to.
Full feeds make a huge difference to me - thanks for opening them up!
All major site I know of do not provide full feeds.
Simply because it kills the business. How can a full feed be OK, when it kills the simple thing that you life from. Then the site goes off-line and everyone is unhappy.
Like you said, lets see.
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