I admit that with an infinitesimal amount of geeky ways to go about surfing the web, even I lag behind from time to time. In this case, I’ve fallen by the wayside when it comes to RSS feeds, which I’ve recently discovered. I’ve always known about feed readers, but never knew just how useful they were until I got my BlackBerry. Now I can get my favorite blog updates on the go, which saves me from having to buy reading material for the bus ride to work everyday. I currently use Viigo, which lets me aggregate my Google Reader subscriptions. Cool beans!
This is where the fantasy ends and harsh reality begins. I found out that a number of blogs only provide excerpts or summaries of feeds. This means that in order to read full articles, you have to click through to visit the actual blog. This is what one would call ‘a bad thing’ because of the following reasons:
(1) Time and bandwidth is used up in visiting a site that may or may not be optimized for a mobile viewing experience.
(2) End users like myself who have an amount of feed subscriptions numbering in the double digits may be discouraged from even reading the full article at all.
(3) Frustrations may even escalate to a complete unsubscription of the offending blog and possible boycott.
(4) It’s just not cool, dood.
So, after learning about this setback, I found out that I was also guilty of this treasonous act – my feeds were set to summarized. That changed immediately, so now my blog feeds are the full enchiladas, complete with salsa (hot or mild choices available).
I know that the reason for summarizing your feeds is to generate more traffic for your blog. However, if you use services like FeedBurner, which also tracks your feed statistics, you shouldn’t need to cripple your feeds anymore. Gimmicky tactics to lure people to your site are tacky. Besides, that’s what money is for.
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