RSS and excerpts

Just a quick note to any of you that still use RSS only to deliver small excerpts rather than full text: I probably don’t read your blog.

I’ve increasingly noticed a pattern in my reading wherein I just don’t read the blogs I have added who only provide excerpts. The smaller the excerpt, the less I read. I think the reason is fairly obvious – the excerpts are too small to catch my attention. Further, I just like reading everything in one place. That’s the whole point – it’s an aggregator. If you’re worried about something silly like “driving traffic to your site” by only providing partial excerpts, don’t. If I want to make a comment, I will go there and do so. If you’re worried about “ad revenue”, or something, you’re probably delusional.

So just a word of advice: provide full text in your RSS feed. Or preferably provide two feeds with a choice (maybe some people just like the excerpts and don’t have an aggregator that will only display an excerpt).