Why partial-text feeds suck

I’ve always had this gut feeling that partial-text RSS feeds were dumb. Never liked them, never subscribed to them (except for friends’ blogs). I just couldn’t figure out why they were bad, though. To me, it was just the nuissance of having to read just a piece, then having to go to the original blog to get the rest (v on Google Reader). It is certainly annoying.

I could understand, though, why some people would want to use that, especially those who make a living out of their content. How’s anyone going to see their advertisement? Who could blame them?

But Robert Scoble did a great piece on why it does indeed suck, even for those who want to make a buck (or quite a few) with blogging. Main idea:

“So, how does anyone make any money?

Well, let’s stay in TODAY’S world. In today’s world you get journalists, geeks, bloggers, connectors, to read your content and link to it. That’ll bring a larger audience to visit your Web page. How do you do that? Serve out full-text RSS. Why? Cause by doing that you treat the connector with the most possible respect and give him/her the easiest way to consume your content and link to it.” (my bold)

Everything’s about linking after all, isn’t it?

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Update:

By the way, BlogBurst exclusively takes in blogs with full-text feeds for big print media publishing.

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