A Feed Is Born

Full or Partial?

by Juned on August 17th, 2007

If you head over at techdirt Mike Masnick writes about Why Full Text Feeds Actually Increase Page Views (The Freakonomics Explanation). This was brought about by readers reaction to of the Freakonomics Blog to the New York Times, which had shifted from full to partial text feed for RSS. This highlighted again the discussion between which is better partial or full, with Mike Ingram posting Partial Freakonomics feed = bad idea. Mike Masnick writes about how full feeds can actually increase page view. Meanwhile, The Pheedo Blog points to that there is no difference between partial and full feed in Click Through Rate (CTR), here.

From a reader point of view I really like feeds that are Full Text. If what the Pheedo blog says is true I guess one interesting question in this discussion is not whether or not Full or Partial Text is better, but (i) what does the effect of partial text feed on the reader? (ii) Will a reader be more likely to unsubscribe to a feed if he or she is pointed to the website? Or (iii)Can one actually make a partial feed work for that particular website? For example for feeds that use partial feed would it be more effective to place summaries at the first two paragraphs of the post? As I see it ( although I really like full text feeds) the use of a summaries for partial text feeds is worthwhile because it gives the reader an opportunity to evaluate the post before going to the blog or website.

Share This

Related Stories

What are you?
Use of RSS has increased by 21 percent
Cherwell and its RSS Feeds
What type of truncated feed would you read?
RSS Feed to go the Full Monty?

POSTED IN: Information Overload, RSS