I, like a gadjillion other bloggers, have a feedreader account. I collect the feeds of the blogs I love and put them there, and I try each morning to read everyone. I try. I even attempt to click through and leave a comment when I’m inclined to do so or I just want to remind that person that I’m still reading them even though I appear to have completely vanished off the face of the blogosphere.
I work here, people. :eyebrows:
So, you can imagine and may even be familiar with the frustration of those [clipped feeds] where you MUST click through if you would like to continue reading. I love you. I do. But I have 100+ blogs in my reader – I know I am not alone when I say if you’ve clipped your feed, you are skipped with intents to return that don’t/can’t follow through. You are losing more readership than you are gaining, in my own humble opinion. Good intentions don’t make for an increase in stats, I say.
Personally, I would rather have you reading my whole post in a reader than skipping what I have to say because I’ve cut it short. I know you have other stuff to do. I can relate! I provide my readers a full feed UNLESS my post is very long and I use the < — read more –> option, those are the only posts that require continued reading on site (for everyone, not just feedreaders).
This is a plea, on behalf of everyone using a feedreader for everyone who has set their feeds to show a short excerpt – please show the full content. Pretty please with splenda on top?
::returns to bloglines with froo froo latte in hand::
{18 Comments}
I feel ya! I read my feeds in Google Reader – unfortunately I like it better than Bloglines! – and I hate snippets! :rolleyes:
My feeds are FULL and I usually don’t use the more tag. :yes:
I’m so glad I’m not alone! :hug:
It is good to know I am not alone. In my blog reading habits and my dislike of the abbreviated feed. Unless those first couple of sentences reel me in, you’ve lost me. Just like you, I go to the next feed, fullly intending to go back to the previous, but that often doesn’t happen due to time constraints.
Yeah, I’d never survive the blogging world without a feeder. It’s a beautiful thing.
Being one of those with clipped feeds, I do it because I don’t care for full posts in my feeder because some people have posts that are so long that it takes up page after page and I have to scroll down it to get past it. I may have over 300 feeds to dig through in a day, so I like the shorter vesions. But to that end, I also try and put enough in the snippet to reel people in or, at least have them tagging it for full reading later. 🙂
Hear, hear!
I use Google reader and I put all the click-throughs (except the folk who regularly visit me) into its own folder. That is the last folder I read. Period.
That’s good to know. I don’t use excerpts. Excerpts seem like a newspaper page jump for which my abbreviated attention span is usually too short to make the leap.
Oh I so agree!!!!
xo
LBC
If I read Jo correctly, it sounds like the clipped feeds are trying to be considerate of others if they tend to have long posts. News feeds I see are often set up that way.
Is the consensus here that it is truly more considerate of those having feed reader accounts, to not clip? I’d like to know for future reference to minimize frustrations for others should I ever venture into that world.
Bob,
The way I see it, feedreaders allow people to read everything in one place. So then, why force people who WANT to read it all in one place to have to visit multiple sites, when that’s what they’re trying to cut back on? It is time consuming, and staying on task is really vital to people trying to make time for more and more reading on the web.
Even my news feeds – if I don’t see something in the title, I whiz right past it. I can’t tell you the last time I clicked through on a snipped feed item in my reader.
I’d say it’s much more considerate to offer a full feed, and clip items that are only so long that you clip them at the site level, as well.
:2cents:
I hate it whenever I have to click on the “More” link too. I wish to read the full post in my reader then just opt to leave a comment after I’ve read the whole thing. I wish everyone would use Cavemonkey’s full text feed. The plugin allows your blog to generate full text feeds regardless of the “More” tag usage.
Here’s another one I found: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/full-text-feed/
Thanks for the advice. I had opted for abbreviated ones to get people to come to the actual site so inserted pictures could be seen. I’ve just changed over to full after reading your post and comments. I did this at Typepad account site. I didn’t see any options for inserting “more” depending on length of post. I use Feedburner and didn’t see any options at all there.
Yayy June! :clapping: Yours is one that I always want to come back to but never seem to make it, so THANK YOU!!
You are not alone for sure, I second that. I’m using GoogleReader and think exactly the same. As far as I know my feed shows full content. If it doesn’t please let me know!
Amen!! I 100% agree with you! When I come across a feed that is clipped, I more often than not unsubscribe!
Ok, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m one of the last bloggers on earth who still doesn’t use a feed reader. I actually go from site to site when I have time to read blogs, LOL.
I really ought to join the treadmill one of these days.
Oh dear! I hope that mine is set to that option! Guess I better find out…
Lulu – you’ve got a full feed. :yes:
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