Besides obviously agreeing with this, I thought I’d give a recent real-world example and kudos to RIMarkable for switching to full-content feeds.
I’d actually unsubscribed from the RIMarkable feed because it was excerpt only (and e-mailed them to tell them why), because other BlackBerry blog sites did offer full content feeds. When RIMarkable switched to full content, Robb took the time to reply to my mail and let me know they had done so – I promptly re-subscribed.
TVSquad and Cinematical switched to partial feeds a few weeks ago, and initially it really annoyed me. But the more I used it, the less it annoyed me, until I actually began to enjoy it.
On many (most?) blogs you’re probably not going to read everything, and it’s nice that my river of news feed shrunk substantially. It was especially nice when I was mobile.
One significant difference is that they offer a substantial chunk of content within the partial feed, so you can usually get most of the detail without clicking through. Our local paper, OTOH, offers partial feeds that are the first line of the article. Combined with horrible headline writing, you often have to click through just to find out what they’re talking about.
With a full content feed your tools can (and should) give you the ability to view the content this way. The point is that offering full content gives folks the choice.
PulpFiction offered people the ability to display the permalinked article, which solved the problem for many.
From an advertising perspective… if you unsubscribe but never visited the site anyway, what has the publishing company lost? Your eyes weren’t hitting their ads anyway, so they’ve lost nothing.
I’m mixed on this idea. I like full feeds, as they really make RSS reading simple and I don’t have to stray from my reader.
On the other hand, I manage my girlfriend’s site (http://www.erincooks.com/) and it’s a picture heavy site, If I do a full text feed, readers get all the pictures, and lose the site styling. I feel like if anyone is reading it solely via the RSS feed, it’s lessening their experience (not as nicely styled, no lightbox effect, etc). Giving the reader the partial feed takes them to the site and they see the post as it was meant to be seen.
I don’t get the problem, really. Give me the full feed, my reader will do the rest, just the way I like it.
If a site really has to have partial feeds, what’s the big problem about offering an option. Not a technical one.
If I’d like to see the content al css-ified (as it was intented) I’ll visit the site. If it’s about advertising, put the d*mn ads in the feed.
Partial feeds just defy the purpose, from where I’m coming from at least.
[…] Obviously, +1 (and +1). […]