Friday Rage
People, we need to have a frank talk here.
I use Google Reader to follow the blogs I read. I subscribe to over 170 blogs and there is no way I’ll be checking that many websites consistently (heck, I can hardly remember to read private blogs). If you don’t use Google Reader yet, you should go fix that now. It’s basically like an email account for your blogs – instead of emails, you get the new posts for all the blogs you ask it to track. It’s brilliant.
Except that some people have their blogs set at only partial feeds. That means that in my Google Reader, only about a paragraph of their post shows up. In order to read the whole thing, I have to click through to their blog.
But guess what? Usually, I don’t.
Now, I do click through to blogs all the time in order to comment, but when I do that it’s my choice. I hate being forced to click through in order to find out what they wrote. And so I just keep skipping them and finally just delete the post after a few days of ignoring it.
I do subscribe to some blogs that have a partial feed. I’ve been reading them for a long time and I’m not going to drop them now. But I am not going to subscribe to anymore blogs that have one. It’s just too much of a hassle. My new policy is to check if they have a full feed before I even read more than an entry.
Yesterday, I went through and weeded out a big chunk of the blogs I read that only have partial feeds that I wasn’t committed too. I’ll keep a list of those blogs and check them occasionally, but they aren’t worth clogging up my Reader with since they just make me want to tear my hair out.
Zoot linked to an article recently saying that blogs with partial feeds don’t really get any more traffic than blogs with full links. And if they’d surveyed me, I would have agreed. I am MORE likely to comment on a blog that has a full feed because that’s the only extra effort, rather than having already made an effort to read the post itself. By the time it gets to commenting, well, I’m just plain worn out!
Do you have a partial feed? Are you ashamed of yourself? Is anyone else as irrationally angered by partial feeds as I am?
P.S. If you don’t know if your blog has a partial or full feed, go visit your blog’s homepage and then click the icon that looks like orange box to the left. It is probably in the toolbar or at the end of your address bar, depending on your browser. If it the page that appears shows your complete posts, you’re golden. If it only shows a snippet, well, you can guess how I feel about that.
I agree as well! An additional beef I have is that sometimes the firewall from the connection I use most of the time blocks blogger. If a person only publishes a partial feed I don’t get to see it and I read too many to remember to go back.
Also, hello! I figured today is as good as any to de-lurk. I stumbled across your blog from links I cannot recall. I think I might have known you/of you back when you were at BYU. Random.
Ya know, the first reader I used was called Pluck that had an online component. It stunk then I wandered from reader to reader (RSS Reader, FeedReader, even Thinderbird and a few mail clients) and when I found Google had a reader I tried it out. TOTALLY sold on it. I can even see who subscribes to my feed using Google Reader.
Yes, I drank the Google Kool-Aid.
It was easy to import my feeds from other readers. Most export as OPML or XML now and Google will import them.
My only question to you is … am I in your reader?
And I updated my feed to full.
No excuses …
~Jef
Add me to the Could-Not-Agree-More chorus! I even mentioned this a few weeks ago on my own blog. I have a few that I click through on, but not very many and if you’re new FORGET IT!
I adore google reader…and somehow it makes me feel like less of a stalker when I go through and read people’s personal lives. At least that way, the information is coming to me instead of me shamelessly seeking out people’s blogs to read.
Like yours…although we did meet, like, twice freshman year, I think.
At any rate, I think you’re great. Thanks for not doing the partial feed.
170 blogs?? wow. I have no idea what google reader is… but I’m lucky enough to know that all you have to do is click on the side of your blog! 🙂
I completely agree. I sometimes will unsubscribe because it drives me crazy to have to click over to someone’s blog just to read what they wrote … I hope mine isn’t set like that I will have to check.
Janssen I just got google reads and I LOVE it!!!!!
Amen! Although I don’t quite read that many blogs, so it’s a little easier for me to be patient with partial feeds. Still I feel you…
I always feel funny commenting on peoples blogs without a link back to my own. As a family a couple of years ago we went semi-private and so there aren’t really any links, at least not easy ones. I don’t mind people coming to the blog, just not wide open. You have been to Randi’s blog before, and she posted a link here. http://isitjustrandi.blogspot.com/2008/03/swan-lake.html