July 19th, 2007
Switching from Partial to Full RSS Feeds
This is just a quick note to let everyone know that this site’s RSS feed has been switched from partial to full text. If you previously unsubscribed because the feed was partial-text only, subscribe today and enjoy full text delivered via email or the feed-reader of your choice.
If you experience any problems with the RSS feed, leave a comment here. I’ll be watching feed activity very closely for the next few days to see if the difference is making a positive impact. Thanks everyone.
–John Place
This article is authored and copyright © by John Place.
If you liked this article, make sure you subscribe to my feed via RSS or email.
Learn More About John Place
Check Out the Main Page
Posted
on
Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 3:03 am under
I doubt anyone’s following comments in this thread, but just in case, here’s a summary of how the switch to full feeds is affecting the site:
1) Traffic is down across the board because fewer people are clicking through to the site (obviously an artificat of having the entire post available in the feed).
2) Fewer people appear to be Stumbling the articles or otherwise submitting them to Social Networking sites. This is not something I anticipated. And it further affects traffic.
3) The switch to full feeds has thus far had no impact on subscription rates or drop-off rates; it doesn’t appear that anyone cares whether the feeds are full or partial.
The real bummer about the lower traffic is that I’m losing site stats for my most recent articles, which I use to judge whether or not my readership enjoyed an article. With fewer comments and FAR FEWER stats, I really have no way to know if I’m connecting with you guys or not.
If I switch back to partial feeds, this will be why. I’ll keep you posted.
July 21st, 2007 at 2:10 pmJohn,
My gut tells me you wouldn’t be doing a disservice to your readers by generating partial feeds with this blog. I think your posts are the kind that people prefer to read in the context of the blog, rather than the quick-scan-and-absorb-type posts that seem to work best in a feed-reader. Plus, your design is a really good fit for the content, and you don’t have advertising, so one of the benefits of full rss (eliminating clutter and distraction) doesn’t apply (imho).
Just my .02 :-)
July 22nd, 2007 at 8:53 amThanks for your helpful observations, Kevin.
I’m looking for the best way to connect with my readers, and I figured I’d test the waters of full feeds to see how everyone liked them.
Given the obvious downsides of full-feeds from the publisher’s perspective, I was hoping to see some indication that people truly enjoyed the change.
Right now I consider these full-feeds to be in “beta test” mode. :)
–John
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 amThank you for offering full feeds, Mr. Place.
A while before you started full feeds, I had done an RSS slim-down and one of my criteria was to eliminate partial-feed providers. I was sad to unsubscribe to this blog. When I got word you were offering full RSS, I quickly jumped back in.
(Full RSS, IMHO, offers a very convenient and time-efficient method of scanning subscriptions.)
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:52 amThank you for sharing your thoughts, Jesse. I believe full feeds are here to stay. The site took a traffic hit as a result of the switch, but I’ve been able to build it back up over the weeks so that it’s now as high as it ever was when I was running partial feeds.
Subscribers are very important to me, so I will continue to offer full feeds. Thanks again for your feedback.
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:53 pmMy pleasure. Glad to hear your traffic is ship-shape. Keep up the great work!
August 24th, 2007 at 8:09 am