There’s a blogosphere skirmish brewing online. Duncan Riley, of The Blog Herald, another Western Australian weblog, got on the wrong side of Robert Scoble today. He doesn’t agree with the idea of full text RSS feeds; it reduces his revenue from his weblog advertising.
I’m with Scoble on this, I unsubscribe from RSS feeds that are partial. I use an aggregator to save time, skimming through content quickly until I find something compelling. In some cases I use the headline and the body to determine if it’s something I’d like to read in detail. If that’s the case I’ll often visit the weblog in a browser, that way I can get a little more context (other posts, comments, etc.).
Providing a partial feed doesn’t give me all the information I need, so I unsubscribe. I realise some people rely on hits to generate advertising revenue, but like any business in an evolving industry, they adapt. After all, it’s not about the business, it’s about the customers! Lets not forget that.
