One great mystery of the Internet is whether full feeds are better than partial feeds. Most blogging platforms give an option to decide between the two RSS feed styles, but which one should you choose?
Partial Feeds
I figured I would start with the bad - partial feeds. Personally, I hate them. Have you ever been reading an RSS entry only to have it cut off right at the good part? Happens to me all the time. Really, that reason alone is probably enough to make anyone want to use full feeds.
However, despite the fact that partial feeds can chase away some readers, it can be quite useful as well. I have two words for you - Content Theft. Most people who steal your content will not be able to do so if you use partial feeds, since they get your content via RSS feeds.
Full Feeds
I prefer full feeds over partial feeds for one simple reason - I don’t have to click any links to read the article. Although a single click may not seem that bad, it can be quite annoying. It is also much better because feed advertisements and extra links (like e-mail this, digg this… etc) will not be so intrusive. Instead of appearing every 5 lines they will appear every 20+ lines.
Also, some RSS readers have options that allow the user to choose between full or partial feeds. Why not give your readers the choice?
Please subscribe, or else I will cry. Do you really want to make a programmer cry?
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