Over the past six months, my feed reading habits have evolved. I used to read summary feeds in a desktop reader, but I’ve moved towards the more common model of reading full post feeds in a web based reader.

I wasn’t really conscious of this change, until I read Meg’s Hey You! Yes you, with the Partial Feed. I started off by defending summary feeds, but ended up realising that I’d come to value full post feeds as much as most bloggers.

After some further thought, I realised that there are two distinct models of feed reading, which I outline briefly below.

The Aggregated Feed Model

When I started blogging, I mostly read aggregated feeds, such as the one for the BUMPzee No NoFollow community. I’d get hundreds of entries streaming past, many on topics I wasn’t interested in. I’d pick out the small number I wanted to read and visit the site.

For this sort of feed reading, I prefer summary feeds. When I’m skimming through hundreds, or even thousands entries, the full post is a distraction – I read too much before discarding something I don’t really want to read.

With this model, reading is based on the topic, not who is writing it.

The Individual Feed Model

I’ve slowly moved toward reading a small number of individual feeds, from sites that I’ve become a loyal reader of.

For these sites, I’m going to read everything they write. I’m not skimming, so having the full text feed is much preferable. It’s a real time saver to be able to read most items in my reader and only visit the site for those I want  to comment on.

With this model, reading is based on who is writing the content.

Natural Progression From Aggregated To Individual Feeds

I suspect most people start with the aggregated feed model then move to the individual feed model over time. The reason for this is simple.

When starting out, most of us don’t know any individual sites – but we do know what we are interested in. Therefore it is natural to read by topic and aggregated feeds assist us in finding posts we may be interested in.

Over time, we sift the grain from the chaff. Once we work out which sites we want to read on a daily basis, it makes sense to go directly to the source and subscribe to the individual feed.

Desktop Readers vs Web Based Readers

Traditionally, I have preferred using desktop readers (such as SharpReader) to web based readers (such as Google Reader or Bloglines). This is largely because I’ve been using the aggregated feed model of reading.

When reading an aggregated feed, I’m skimming through hundreds of entries, pressing Delete, Delete, Delete. I need an instant response -  lag of any kind is not tolerated. Although the speed of web based readers has vastly improved, thanks to AJAX, they still can’t match the speed of a desktop reader. Of course, most web based readers don’t let you delete things, which annoys me. When I decide I don’t want something, I don’t want it!

When reading individual feeds, I’m not skimming, so speed is not such a factor. This makes web based readers more attractive, although I’m still annoyed I can’t delete!

As it happens, I was forced to adopt a web based reader because many of the individual feeds I subscribe to use FeedBurner. Unfortunately, FeedBurner URLs are blocked here in China, so my desktop reader can’t access their feeds directly. Google Reader’s server can access FeedBurner URLs – and I can access Google Reader. So I now use Google Reader.

What Sites Offer – Full Post vs Summary Feeds

So far, I’ve been discussing what I prefer to read. Most full post vs summary feed discussions focus on which format sites offer.

Read Meg’s post and the accompanying comments and you’ll find that most people strongly believe that the full post should be offered. This is because they are using the individual feed model of reading. I’m not going to go over why the full post should be offered. That’s been discussed often enough.

What’s really interesting to me is why some sites choose to offer a summary feed only, especially as there is such strong feelings about this in the blogosphere. The reasons I can see for this include:

1. Advertising Revenue: if people read your full post in the reader, advertising revenue is negatively impacted (less impressions, less clicks). The argument against this is that people reading your full post in their reader will come to your site to comment on some of your posts. If you don’t offer the full post feed, you may lose them all together. You may be better to offer the full feed and investigate ways to display ads in the feed.
2. Commercialisation: I am aware that some high-end blogs give away the summary feed, but charge for the full text feed. They will lose readers, as per the previous point, but they make money from the remaining readers. Unless your blog is really (and I mean really) popular, this won’t work for you. Most readers will just pass you by.
3. Content Scrapers: full post feeds mean your entire content is at risk of being scraped. This affects many sites in the blogosphere, including mine – I recently discovered that my feed is being scraped. Opinion about what can be done about this is divided. Most bloggers seem to accept this as a fact of life, while others, such as Lorelle, urge us to take action. At the very least, I’m going to add a copyright statement and a link to the full article at the top of my full post feed entries. However, like most bloggers, I’m going to continue offering a full post feed, because I don’t want to alienate my subscribers.
4. Lack Of Awareness: some people simply don’t know about the depth of feeling against summary feeds. This mostly affects new bloggers. I definitely fell into this category when I’d just started.
5. Lack Of Choice: some people prefer to read summary feeds. When they have to choose what to offer, they go with what they themselves prefer. I fell into this category and only offered a summary feed for many months. In fact, I only offered a full post feed because I’d developed DualFeeds and thought I better use my own plugin!

Blatant Plug: guess at this point, it would be remiss of me not to mention that my DualFeeds plugin allows you to offer both a full post and summary feed. If you’re not sure whether to offer a full post or summary feed, then offer both! Giving the choice to your readers is a good thing.

The Final Word

Did you start with the aggregated feed model, then move to the individual feed model? Or do you have a different model? Do you prefer a desktop or web based reader? Do you only offer a summary feed? If so why?

I’m really interested in know what people think about this, so leave me a comment below if you want to share your experience.

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Tags: content scraping, feed readers, Feeds

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 11:33 am and is filed under Feeds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.