Pirillo and Ochman Declare Full-Text RSS Dead; Wake Me Up for the Funeral

Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome comes down hard on full-text RSS feeds, ostensibly because ... well, it's never apparent why he doesn't like them. Just that he's not going to have them anymore.

I'd bet, though, it's because he'd like to drive his site ad revenues up.

B. L Ochman comes down with four feet against full feeds. Why? It helps click-through on ads.

Maybe... maybe not. I'm skeptical of the "I need the AdSense revenue" people. At least one tech blogger claims 1 million hits a month, and he has AdSense, yet he's reduced to selling his burnt-out laptop. I don't believe for a minute that 99% of AdSense ad carriers are covering more than their hosting fees.

Here in Copenhagen, I decided to abandon all interest in AdSense and truncated feeds the minute I was asked to help set up a commercial blog. As Esther Dyson wrote in Wired in the mid-90s: consultants and advisors should give away 90% of their thinking for free, since the 10% they sell would have accounted for 90% of their revenues anyway. And since the giveaway is just advertising, the revenue snowballs.

Works for me.

Update: In what can charitably be described as a spleen-venting, Pirillo accepts reality and reinstates full feed: "I love how everybody whines when they don't get their way... . So, for all of you who unsubscribed from my RSS feed because it wasn't the way you wanted it (even though you're not the one providing it or paying for it), then you won't ever know [that I have reinstated full feeds]. ... Did you know that, or were you one who cut off his/her nose to spite your face? [sic];)

Tip of the firewarden's helmet to Shel Holtz for discovering that.

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Posted by Allan Jenkins on May 25, 2005 at 10:14 PM in Blog Management, RSS | Permalink

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Tracked on Jun 8, 2005 6:29:36 PM

Comments

And what's wrong with making money from advertising Allan?
Take a look at Adrants, Marketing Vox, Endgadget. THey all run ads and support themsleves with advertising. Not with Google ads. I've never talked to any blogger who really makes money with Google ads.

I want people to come to my blog to comment, trackback, and to buy my reports which i sell a lot of through the blog.

you got a problem with that?

besides that, i resent people who put their 2000 word+ posts in RSS feeds. I use my feed reader because I am in a hurry.

i have given away free information through my articles, seminars (just did a free one last night) and newsletters for the past 10 years. I'm not worried about giving away ideas. But i am worried about paying my bills so I can continue to provide quality information in a free format.

Posted by: B.L. Ochman | May 25, 2005 11:16:16 PM

I like many others find myself unsubscribing from feeds that don't provide full content. I live inside my RSS reader, so if the content isn't there I don't usually seek it out.

As for comments, it I want to comment I will click-thru.

Posted by: Josh Hallett | May 25, 2005 11:49:35 PM

I'm not militant one way or the other, but 95% of what I read starts from either my RSS feed, or from Technorati or Blogdigger. It's an extremely rare truncated posting that interests me enough to click through to the site. However, there are several sites that I click through to just because I like the graphics or the layout better.

There are also some sites that have such small, illegible text that the only way I can be bothered to read them is through an RSS aggregator. The site you mention with 1 million visits a month is one of them.

Posted by: Eric Eggertson | May 26, 2005 3:36:00 AM

Blogs without full RSS feeds don't make the cut. There's too much to do and accomplish without having to visit that many sites every day!

Posted by: Tanya Reynolds | May 26, 2005 10:22:09 PM

Yeah, AdSense doesn't pay my bills. Thankfully, I'm in a better position financially now so I don't need to hawk anything ;-)

But while I'm happy to break 300$/month in AdSense, I have friends who are making 10-25K/month off of AdSense on blogs.

Posted by: Jeremy Wright | May 27, 2005 2:12:14 PM

B. L., you misread my post. Nothing in it against advertising.

What I find optimistic on your part, and that of others who serve up truncated feeds, is your belief your content is so compelling I will instantly click "Read more". Even among my favorite bloggers, I can think of three, maybe four, whose content is so consistently good that I would always click "Read more" (ironically, they provide full feeds).

If you really want me to come to your site to comment, trackback, and maybe buy your report, you need to give me compelling content. I won't see that content, 95% of the time, if you don't give me a full feed.

I'm amused that you resent those of us who provide full feed and long posts. Luckily, there's a market for both USAToday style and The Economist style.

Posted by: Allan Jenkins | May 27, 2005 3:08:41 PM

They must have seen http://www.fullfeeds.com/

:)

Posted by: Lee | Oct 1, 2006 9:23:23 AM

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