Full Feed vs Partial Feed

Every now and then out there in "blogworld" I read a rant from a blog writer about the issue of full feeds vs partial feeds. To be honest, I used to wonder what all the fuss was about really. So what if a blog writer wants you to have to visit their blog to read what they're reading? Fair enough that they want to count you in their stats (for their own enjoyment and/or for the sake of advertising).

Naturally it didn't matter to me at the time because I was visiting blogs anyway. It wasn't until I attempted to use a feedreader myself that I began to understand what they even meant by frustration with people who only allowed partial feeds.

For those who I have already lost (don't worry, I was there myself not that long ago), a feedreader is basically a page that collects all the recent blogposts you want to read. It shows you when a blog has a new post and you can read that post all there at the same website. When you read a lot of blogs or have a number of blogs that don't update regularly, they are a brilliant way of saving time.

If a blog allows a full feed version, you can read the entire post without needing to actually leave your bloglines page. If they only offer a partial feed you get the first few lines of their post and then have to click through to their page to read the rest. That takes time that I don't always have.

So, if I don't have time to visit the site, does that mean I'm a reader that person isn't really interested in?

I guess the question of whether to run a full feed or a partial feed comes down to this - do you blog to be heard or do you blog for some other reason? There's no real wrong or right answer as to the reason for blogging - but it is a good question to ask yourself when you're making the decision between full and partial feeds for your blog.

What about comments? Do people comment less if they don't have to visit your site? I wondered the same myself before I started reading in a feed reader. Admittedly of late I have been commenting less often per site than I used to due to reading more and more blogs. In general though, I have found that I am MORE likely to comment on a blog where I've been able to read the whole post (and therefore know I have something I'd like to say).

Blogs that only offer partial feeds get left until last in my feed reader. IF I have the time I will have a look at the partial feed and decide if it's worth clicking over to that blog. As it turns out, I visit most of my full feed blogs more often than I visit the partial feed ones.

Sadly this week I culled the first partial feed from my bloglines reader. I still have others but most of them will be the next to go as new blogs get added to my list. I can't help but feel like some of the partial feed blogs are more interested in my advertising value than my reader value. I'm sure this isn't always the case. But it is how I feel.

If you're reading this and only offer a partial feed, please reconsider. If you have some other reason why you only offer a partial feed rather than a full feed, please let me know. I'm always interested in other peoples opinions of what they are doing and why.

Is there anyone reading this that actually PREFERS to subscribe to blogs that only offer a partial feed? If so, I'd be really interested in hearing your viewpoint as well.