You sound angry today. Being back in the US can't be so bad you want to shoot people, can it? ;)
/pd
· 4 years ago
shhhhh... be quiet.. in certain states you can get jailed for say "i wanna shot someone" !!
Steve
· 4 years ago
I'm reminded of the book Catcher in the Rye. Forgive me if I paraphrase incorrectly but in the book Holden speaks of a speech class where if the speaker went off topic the class yelled "Digression!"
Perhaps there should be a similar rule here. However, instead of Robert going off topic, it's when his posts seem...well...a bit high and mighty. When this happens and he wields the power of his readers around, we simply yell "Ego!"
Just a thought. ;)
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Steve: I have an ego. I'm not going to treat my readers like idiots or slaves. I won't send them to people who treat people this way. Maybe the folks who treat people like info slaves are the real egotists.
Jeremy Pepper
· 4 years ago
If you come to Arizona for DEMO, I'll take you to a shooting range to get out the frustration.
Yes, we are the Old West still, at times.
John
· 4 years ago
The is exactly what I have been telling bloggers for what seems like eternity now. They are old-school. They think the only way they can up their business is to have users go to their site to collect on advertising. If you offer everything through RSS you still get the hits, you still retain the business, and you strengthen the bond between business and customer.
The is a classic example of a site "not getting-it." They are only causing themselve more problems by alienating users and, at the same time, doubling their traffic costs by making customers download their pages twice. Once through RSS and another through their web page.
Ahmad
· 4 years ago
Robert: You really need to relax, people do have different opinions about different issues... just because they don't agree with you is not an excuse to act childish.
Brad
· 4 years ago
Slave? Is that a joke?
John
· 4 years ago
Too much caffeine since being back? ;-^)
Though I do get ticked at such "canned" responses myself. I wouldn't have linked to them for that reason alone.
Matthew
· 4 years ago
That's what you get when the marketing department is driven by fear.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Brad: that's how many content sites view you. As a slave that should dutifully visit without ever questioning. Oh, and you should also add some "user generated content" while you're there, so they can put an ad next to it and make lots of money off of your efforts.
Ahmad: this is far beyond agreeing or not agreeing. They want my readers to visit and be dutiful little readers. And if having a snit is childish, then you might want to visit some other, more corporate blog. I think you got me confused with some press release or something.
Patrick Grote
· 4 years ago
Robert ... I think this is one of those things that cannot be settled by opinions.
People claim that partial feeds draw users to a site versus full feeds that people use to send people to a site.
Are you aware of any experiments or studies done on this subject?
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
As a content publisher who provides partial text feeds I'm offended by this. Did you even try to understand the flipside Robert?
For example, would you pay 10$/year to get full text feeds? Would you suffer ads in your feeds to get full text feeds?
Sorry, but the world is changing. Feeds are being monetized either directly or by asking folk to come to the site if they want more information.
It's not about making users into "slaves" anymore than requiring you to pay for a newspaper makes you "slave".
All of that said, I prefer full text feeds, but if a blog is consistently good enough I don't mind partial text.
We dont' do partial text across the board, only once a site approaches the million page per month band. And we only keep it partial if subscribers don't drop like flies.
Ultimately we're trying to find a balance between actually making money off the content that costs us money, and giving our users what they want, how they want it.
It's a struggle though. Especially when you get rants like yours, Robert. Rants that don't allow for any leniency. Any innovation. Any CHANGE.
Ahmad
· 4 years ago
No not at all, there is a reason your blog is so popular, because of the passion you bring to it. However I think in some cases you may get carried away and not realize it. E.g. the title of this blog entry "Can I shoot someone?" sure of course you don't mean that but its a tad overkill for someone looking for a link and not happening to provide full text feeds!
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
Patrick: When we put partial feeds on blogs, we see website traffic go up more than 25-70%, depending on the blog, time of day, day of the week, number of posts, etc.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Jeremy: if that's true, then can you at least offer both? Either way, I have 740 feeds and that's too many. I'm getting rid of any that are partial text. Feeds that are partial text treat me like a slave. I'm tired of being treated like a slave.
I don't mind advertising, if done well. AKA, like Google. User-centric and all that.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Patrick: don't know of any studies. I don't really care about studies. Do you need studies to tell you whether something is good or not?
If you think partial text are bettter for readers, then, fine, but offer BOTH!!! That way you are treating your readers with respect. Those who like partial text will feel better. Those, who, like me, prefer full text will feel better too.
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
Robert: Offer both? Like the 360? Both confuses users. As I said, we're not making you into a slave. We're listening to the market for each and every blog that transitions.
The real question here, though, is how can we make feeds work for publishers. Ultimately whatever really works for publishers will really work for users too.
I don't feel partial text feeds are the answer, but they're better than doing nothing.
Instead of whining about how you're a "slave" (still dont' see how that's the case, since you can choose to leave, you can leave feedback, you can email / skype / msn / call me, etc) why not try and think up a solution?
As a publisher WE'RE trying. For our users, and for us.
And saying we should offer every option is a bit non-sensical as well. Would you ask that a newspaper offer both a paid and a free version, and let users choose? How, from a business perspective, do we justify full text feeds? More ads in them? A large segment of the market hates ads in feeds more than they hate partial text feeds.
This is a serious balancing act, and not an easy one.
As I said, we're trying. But that doesn't mean it's an easy trick to pull off.
James Boike
· 4 years ago
Why do I only get partial feeds from you when I subcribe to Scobleizer in Live.com?
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
Scoble, how about this. If we offered full-text feeds with ads as well as partial text feeds without ads, for each blog as well as each category of blog we run as well as for the network of 60 blogs.
Would that work?
As I said, we're still figuring this out. Happy to hear what you have to say :)
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Jeremy: yes, that works for me. I subscribe to feeds with ads, as long as they are full text.
James: my feed includes both full-text and partial-text. I'll see if they can fix that to display my full-text feed.
Or, you might need to get a news aggregator that lets you see the full-text feed. Sorry.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
>Instead of whining about how you’re a “slave” (still dont’ see how that’s the case, since you can choose to leave, you can leave feedback, you can email / skype / msn / call me, etc) why not try and think up a solution?
I thought up the solution already: offer full text feeds. Damn, is it really that hard? If you have business models that need me to visit your Web site that's your problem, not mine.
Figure out how to fix the business model, if that's what is the problem.
Larry
· 4 years ago
You know, the only revenue model left for newspapers is all those ads on their page. If you won't even go to their site at all - ever - that's hammering the last nail in the journalism coffin.
And that won't help democracy.
anon
· 4 years ago
"Maybe the folks who treat people like info slaves are the real egotists."
The company you work for treats people like info slaves.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Larry: it seems that there's plenty of new style business out here. Why did AOL buy Weblogsinc.com for $25 million?
But, thanks for a new argument! Advertising is good for democracy! That's a good one.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Anon: >The company you work for treats people like info slaves.
Howso?
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Oh, and Larry: why can't we put ads into feeds? I don't know of any rule against that.
John C. Welch
· 4 years ago
Um...slaves?
Holy crap, exaagerate much? I know that on my phone, I like partial text feeds, about twenty lines. That lets me decide if I want to see more or blow it off. one line's too little, but when it's a full text feed, then I have no choice in the matter.
Full text forces you to be a goose getting stuffed, and you have no choice about it.
That's bad too, by the way.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
John: then do both.
Brad
· 4 years ago
"Oh, and Larry: why can’t we put ads into feeds? I don’t know of any rule against that"
Hmm. Which is worse, the wrath of Scoble or the wrath of Winer?
solomonrex
· 4 years ago
How do you send people to those other websites? I don't get it. Yours is the only one I see when I visit. Certainly, the Google reader doesn't show links to other sites? Is it your static sidebar? Are you the advertiser here, or are they?
I think this may demonstrate how inbred web 2.0 is becoming. No one who isn't related can...relate.
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
As I said earlier this isn't a simple issue. Robert, you trying to make it into one (without actually caring about the people you're trying to change) is rather amusing.
Full text feeds with ads have issues. Partial text feeds have issues. Some companies, like weblogs inc, do a full feed but strip all the links out making the feed readers "second class citizens" according to some.
Why aren't you willing to actually talk about this, instead of shoving what you want as gospel?
Larry
· 4 years ago
>>Oh, and Larry: why can’t we put ads into feeds? I don’t know of any rule against that.
Because there is no independant third party that measures the metrics of how many eyeballs view an ad in an RSS feed. If you don't know how many people see an ad, there is no way to assign a value to it. Right now, as we both have previously discussed, there is no way to know how many people see anything in RSS.
You can't sell ads for that.
Larry
· 4 years ago
>>Larry: it seems that there’s plenty of new style business out here. Why did AOL buy Weblogsinc.com for $25 million?
If AOL could support a worldwide bureau of reporters and publish an online newspaper, that would be great, but I don't see the industry business model for everyone else in that purchase.
Scott
· 4 years ago
"Why aren’t you willing to actually talk about this, instead of shoving what you want as gospel?"
Well his title isn't "Microsoft Debater", it's "Microsoft Evangelist". How many evangelists do you know that are willing to debate the existance of God? ;)
Black and White is defined by him, it's in his title.
Larry: Ever heard of web bugs? They have them in RSS feeds too. It's one way you can measure eyeballs on ads in RSS feeds.
Full text feeds are nice, but you can't comment through them. You could write a blog post and trackback to the post, but not everyone respects/uses/allows trackbacks. So if you want to discuss the post with the author, you have to go to the site and post a comment anyway. (assuming they allow comment, most egotistical folk enjoy a one-way conversation. You to them).
Partial text feeds are ok, provided they give me an informative slug not just the first 200 or so characters. That's useless.
black_cat
· 4 years ago
I did not read through all the comments but I *know* I'm not the only one wondering where the real Scoble went. Dude, you're sounding more and more like a pompous self-important jackass with these stupid high-school "i'm-not-linking-to-you" threats.
Remember, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. And to think I used to really love Scoble's down-to-earth'd-ness. Yeesh.
Christopher Coulter
· 4 years ago
If you are going to base a sites worth just on the basis of feeds, that's quite shallow.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
black_cat:> Dude, you’re sounding more and more like a pompous self-important jackass with these stupid high-school “i’m-not-linking-to-you” threats.
Heheh! I'm being told off by someone who won't even use his or her real name. What a hoot!
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Christopher: I'm a shallow guy, what can I say? I still read Google News, though. That's where we put sites that don't have full-text feeds.
Larry
· 4 years ago
Thanks Scott. Webbugs aren't precise enough when you consider all the variables with RSS, what if images are scraped before display, what about an aggregator that grabs the RSS and feeds to multiple clients.
When you consider the auditing and due diligence that goes into tracking print circulation, there are really no metrics that match up online, especially for RSS.
I'm with you, Robert, don't bite my head off, but what you're asking is like telling Take Two to give away Grand Theft Auto 8 for free and then make their money by putting an ad in the game.
>>Advertising is good for democracy! That’s a good one.
Something has to support journalism, and ads are about all that is left. Imagine what this (or any other free) country would be like if there were no independant news operations.
Andrew Denny
· 4 years ago
I reckon none of you commenters have spotted what sparked off Robert's ire! But I reckon I did.
It was the responder's automatic, robotic, non-human reply to his original post. Culminating in the insincere "...Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns", which read like someone in a cubicle had just hit a key marked 'end transmission'.
Am I right, Robert? Certainly it would be enough to get me angry...
Larry
· 4 years ago
Geez, I just browsed by (manually) to see some of your vacation pictures and I got shot.
Still love ya, brother.
Andrew Denny
· 4 years ago
PS: Robert, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. :-)
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Larry: the funny thing is that the site owner who sent me the email doesn't run a journalistic site.
The thing is we need to come up with a new business model. Come on, we can do it.
Remember 1987 when everyone said that the only way to make money is with banner ads? That was proven pretty wrong by those two guys from Stanford.
There's plenty of business models out here that don't require treating your users like jerks.
Christopher Coulter
· 4 years ago
Wow, a ready-to-microwave parody, with some Daniel Waters ('Heathers') sprinkles...
No full-text feeds? That's downright EVIL INCARNATE. Partial feeds suck losers dry. If you wanna f*ck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. And err, NewsGator says I have tons of subscribers. None of them for you. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. I’m not going to be your slave today. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. No sirreeeeeeeee. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. I am the most popular blogger around, you can't play with me. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. I wanta shoot someone. As the only place different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Christopher: If you would have added one more "nah" you would have totally gotten me. :-)
Larry
· 4 years ago
Again, I'm with ya. I made the pigrimage to MS last year asking for help. I'm working on several right now. But those two guys from Stanford are making most of their money through banner ads.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Larry: the other two guys. The ones who started Google. Most of their money comes off of text-ads, not banners.
Larry
· 4 years ago
Text, banners, gum, dead pixels, it's all junk on my screen.
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
Scoble, that's nit-picking. They still made most of their money of ads. Nobody ever says "my business model is banner ads". They say "my business model is ads".
If you can come up with a new business model, great. But that's not what you asked for in your rant. You asked for publishers to give you everything for nothing.
Readers, ultimately, have a choice. They can pay for their content with:
1. Money 2. Ads 3. Attention 4. Information 5. Time
Which, to me, means you either have spend to get ad-free feeds, you have to get ads in your feeds, you have to be willing to click through to a site, you have to be willing to give the comapnies info or you need to be willing to somehow give your time.
I'm all for new business models, but you can't just say a line like that without copping to something.
I agree with a previous commenter. This just sounds like you decided to throw a hissy fit at the start and now you're trying to spin it in such a way that it's intelligent.
You want a conversation? Fine. Let's have a conversation. But why does the conversation have to happen HERE? I feel so SLAVED by having to come to your site just to see if there are updates. This isn't a real conversation. It's more like leaving post-its on a bulletin board.
This isn’t a real conversation. It’s more like leaving post-its on a bulletin board.
Wow. Brilliant phrasing. How true.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Jeremy: >Nobody ever says “my business model is banner ads”.
Um, you don't get around too much. Actually they do say that at advertising companies. Quite often, in fact.
There's a big difference between doing TV advertising and doing print advertising or doing outdoor advertising. It's all advertising, to be certain, but it is different.
There's a huge difference between user-friendly advertising and those other types (interstitials, banners, etc).
And, why have the conversation here? Cause I'm the loudmouth who posted this to start it off.
Oran
· 4 years ago
I'm totally with Robert: give me my full-text feed or I'll go elsewhere. My information firehose drinking time is too valuable and limited for me to be wasting some of it making micro-payments to someone's advertising engine.
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
Scoble. I work with many of the ad companies. I was at AdTech. Nobody says "banner ads". Because everyone knows banner ads don't work. Nobody really ever said their model was banner ads. I was there too, right in the thick of it, helping run some of the largest sites on the net at the time.
"There’s a huge difference between user-friendly advertising and those other types (interstitials, banners, etc)."
Yeah? What is it? I mean, Google's now doing animated ads, image ads, banner ads, video ads... How is Google all that different?
"And, why have the conversation here? Cause I’m the loudmouth who posted this to start it off. "
*sigh*
Fine, have it alone. Sometimes conversations require meeting in the middle. You've got a publisher right here talking to you, and you're pushing me away. So, fine, I'll go away.
This isn't conversation-friendly blogging.
Peter Forret
· 4 years ago
"You want a conversation? Fine. Let’s have a conversation. But why does the conversation have to happen HERE? I feel so SLAVED by having to come to your site just to see if there are updates. This isn’t a real conversation. It’s more like leaving post-its on a bulletin board."
Erm ... Jeremy, there's Scoble's cell phone number and email addres on this blog. You could, like, call him? It might be the fastest way to discover if you guys can work it out. Of course, we won't be able to follow the conversation word by word. We don't mind. Talk it over, see if you can agree on something and let us know if it was worth it.
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
Peter, it's okay I've got Scoble's Skype, MSN, email, cell and work numbers.
I was trying to be ironic. If Scoble's asking for massive change, he needs to be ready to hear why things are the way they are (without prejudice) and he needs to be willing to have a conversation.
Telling me that he's right and the 5 reasons why he's right and why all publishers and advertisers are evil (except Google) isn't helping the conversation.
I want to hear if he really wants ads in feeds. What he feels this "new business model" should be based on, from a business perspective. How advertisers / publishers / users needs should balance.
I asked, and keep asking, because I have the sneaking suspicion this is Scoble in "uber elite mode" where he feels that what frustrates him is exactly what companies should respond to.
We call this living locally, applying globally. It's unhealthy for anyone, but especially someone with a platform.
With great power comes... What, the ability rant really ineffectively? ;-)
Besides, I won't invade Scoble's time to talk about this. I know how busy he is first hand. If this is still an issue when I'm on campus again in Feb we'll talk it out.
I'm not actually upset, I just don't see the room for discussion in Scoble's position.
MonkeyMagic698
· 4 years ago
Rock on! Mr Scoble. err ... not sure about that shooting business though ... (thinking smiley goes here)
ps. you should get some smileys for your blog it may help calm you down a bit. You can never have too many smileys right. :)
frankp
· 4 years ago
So full vs partial rages on...
I publish full feeds, but only because I have nothing to lose. RSS is taking off, but it's still not largely understood by the average user. To be charging into 'full feeds are right all the time' at this point seems a bit strange to me.
Yes, I want to syndicate my content. But I respect the wishes of those that don't. Whether I subscribe to a partial feed will depend on the quality of the content.
If 'A List Apart' offered partial feeds, I would take them - gratefully (And not want to shoot them...).
Of course, I don't know who *this* post refers to and perhaps there is no reason for them not to have full feeds; but they obviously believe there is.
Are we talking Blogs only here or all RSS content...?
Most blogs at his point are either fluff or self promotional (at some level) - both these purposes have no reason not to publish full feeds...
The issue here, I guess is mostly monetisation.
I think an earlier commenter was fair to point out we need research and stats on full vs partial. I think it might show full feeds result in more subscribers and still get click throughs. I think it might also show that partial feeds, though resulting in less subscribers *might* have more targetted audiences and therefore yield greater results.
If users subscribe to partial feeds it may be because they know it's worth it. If they know it's worth it it may be because they trust the source. If they trust the source they may be more likely potential customers/consumers/whatever.
Maybe. We'll see.
Jay Small
· 4 years ago
FWIW, I read this post (in full text) via Bloglines, then decided, hell with it, and changed my site's feed to full text.
Yeah, I have an AdSense block on the right side, and yeah, I make tens of cents every month from it, but I'm willing to sacrifice all that to run a little experiment.
I know this from my own use of RSS via Bloglines: I probably wind up visiting the sites where full text feeds are offered at least as much as the excerpt-feed sites. So we'll see if that holds true for the bottom-feeders who have run out of everything else to do on the Web, including porn, poker and Viagra, and therefore have only my site left to live for. ;-)
John C. Welch
· 4 years ago
John: then do both.
Robert, are you paying for that bandwidth? No, you aren't. But you are using it. Can you show me any data that shows RSS feed ads have a positive return greater than the cost of the bandwidth used? I mean, you're advocating something that most of the RSS users are going to *hate*, you should at least have SOME numbers showing the efficacy of your idea, or a link to such numbers.
Because otherwise, you're kind of trying to use your own sense of grandeur to get your way, and that's a bit, oh, I don't know, egotisitical?
Larry
· 4 years ago
Hey Robert, While you've got this, uh, unharnessed energy thing going on right now, why don't you direct it over to the xbox team to find out what the hell ever happened to Risk on the Xbox?
Someone should swing for dropping that ball. Seriously.
Jeremy Wright
· 4 years ago
Just to add that, from a publisher standpoint, the biggest argument for partial text feeds is that it drastically reduces the odds that someone'll steal your content.
And, considering that the feed theft industry is set to become a 1B$ one this year, that's a pretty big motivation.
jamie
· 4 years ago
Scoble, when I subscribe to your feeds on live.com, I see only partial extracts of your blog posts. This is different from what I see for engadget.com and autoblog.com.
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Jamie: I'll look into it. I use NewsGator and RSS Bandit and I'm seeing full-text feeds there.
Hsiang-Tai Chien
· 4 years ago
So I guess I'm one of your 18,000 RSS subscribers.
BTW, I think to use full text should be good to readers.
dmad
· 4 years ago
See, Jeremy, here's the problem. Scoble doesn't grasp the concept of making money.
"Why not simply open the standard? Because it would mean Microsoft would lose control of a vital part of their revenue stream - sales of Office. Instead, by proposing the standard to the ISO they give the appearance of being open and honest, while actually retaining the control they currently enjoy."
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
macbeach: that article has the facts all wrong. Why don't you look into what the licensing of the new Office formats are? If you did you'd be doing more work than this "journalist."
dmad: tell me how you'll make money with advertising if you have no readers? I'd love to know that one!!
meishei
· 4 years ago
woud you pls open your comments rss feed so i can track the "conversation" more easily. Thank you!
The solution to content theft is not partials feeds. It will only take them some time to take a feed and fetch the according content from a website.
If there is a solution, it is more old school approaches like combined efforts as in hurting where the money comes from.
As in full feeds: if your business modell requires partial feeds and your readers want full feeds, then at least be honest and say you are in there for the money, skip the feed at all and make standard SEO - because that is then what you are after: Visits from the search engines, not blog readers who have different interests than SE-visitors.
Tom Gordon
· 4 years ago
THis came up the other month and I commented on partial evrsus full text then. My contention? The decision to provide full or partial feeds is entirely dependant on what I'm using RSS for, and who my intended audience is. My commercial games news website only publishes a partial feed - deliberately - as I don't want people reading the stories, reviews, articles and other things I publish through that channel via RSS. The RSS feed (which has been available since we launched in 2002) is designed specifically to draw people to the website itself, to introduce them not to the one story theya re reading, but to the wealth of other information contained on the site that is not made available via RSS (even via a partial feed).
At the same time, my personal weblog where I talk about Identity and other things is availabel as a full-text feed (with RSS ads, if they're working properly...) because it is a discussion site, a 'blog', not a commercial concern.
Some people just don't get the technology. Give 'em Hell. A lot of places still have trouble understanding the real power and appeal of the internet.
Brad
· 4 years ago
I think the the this points out is the difference between power users like scoble and more casual users. Of course partial text feeds are gonna stand out in 700 feeds.
But I'd imagine that most folks aren't using RSS like Scoble does. As a matter of fact I'd imagine most folks use them not all that differently than they use their favorites.
Walter Lounsbery
· 4 years ago
There is a semi-prolific blogger that works a couple of cubes down the aisle from me. Believe it or not, he only feed the TITLES of his articles! I gently told him once that I wasn't getting much out of his blog that way.
So now he has to walk down the aisle and tell me when he's posted a "good" article. Justice is served!
ben
· 4 years ago
Sounds like some hysterical self-important whiner has a very strange idea of what slavery is.
Ben K
· 4 years ago
Your posts tend to run to ten or fifteen lines or so. Posting a full feed makes sense. Some other blogs (I won't mention Autoblog by name) run to pages of text per posting, and sometimes a dozen or more photos. I don't want all that in my RSS reader. I find it convenient if a feed has a few lines of detail, and lets me decide if I want to go find out more.
In the days of paper journalism, you had to write your articles from the top down, because the editor might cut you off when you exceeded the column inches he had available. Something for blogs to consider.
Vish
· 4 years ago
I won't pretend to understand a damned thing about RSS but I do admit if anyone needed full text of the crap I post they'd probably need therapy more...
M Freitas
· 4 years ago
I think the reality is that each company can think and act the way they want. I tend to agree with summary instead of full content in feeds for content generators such as blogs or enthusiast sites. Have you seem how many scrapper sites making money of our content there is around? They simply paste the whole feed.
Now, you saying a company will not get a link from a page you control just because they don't provide full feeds... Sorry but I am now removing YOUR feed from my list.
Steve
· 4 years ago
"What the mainstream media (MSM) lacks, the blogosphere has in spades: energy, momentum, and a growing audience. But what bloggers lack is money -- bloggers have yet to find an efficient way to turn their hard work into revenue … and until they do, blogging will always be a lonely sidelight, vulnerable to dying with the next missed mortgage check."
Michael S. Malone
Isn't leaving your slavishly derived CGM a fair trade for the attention that your site derives from the other zombie like readers deciding that your comments merit further investigation?
Ben Dummett
· 4 years ago
I checked with my lawyers and they still consider that murder.
Doug
· 4 years ago
Wasn't the whole intention of an RSS feed in the frist place to provide a summary so you could decide wether or not you wanted to load the site to read what was written?
Ethan
· 4 years ago
OK, I'll say it, since I didn't see this go by in the comment thread:
I thought you weren't reading feeds anymore...? Something something no time something skimming something Memeorandum something?
What changed?
(On a side note, I principally offer full-text feeds at TVT, and you managed - historically - to subscribe to the sole partial-text feed. Something upthread about "how hard is it to offer both?" Not hard at all.)
scobleizer
· 4 years ago
Doug (91): NOOOOOO!!! That absolutely is NOT the reason feeds were invented. Talk to Netscape and Dave Winer about what they were used for. Syndication!!!! IE, redistributing content to where YOU wanted it.
Ethan: I started reading my feeds again cause I realized I was missing the small things.
Doug
· 4 years ago
scobelizer, I beg to differ that IS what RSS feeds were originally intended for.
"RSS is defined as Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. RSS files are formed as XML files and are designed to provide content summaries of news, blogs, forums or website content."
"The feeds are generally simple headlines and brief descriptions if the user is interested they can click to see additional information."
"Initially rss feeds were intended for news headlines."
Peter Holloway
· 4 years ago
One aspect that doesn't seem to have been discussed is what Feed Readers are designed/used for. My understanding was that this was the latest way of getting information from various sources without having the overhead of downloading styling, visiting multiple sites etc. It is for the information hungry consumer.
Personally excerpted feeds come across as teaser ads, not content - this is not what RSS/Feed Readers was designed for.
FWIW I don't think the small click through revenues warrant forcing people to visit the site in order to read unless the site has a huge readership. For most publishers I believe that your RSS publishing is better seen as developing a recognition of your expertise within your given industry. It's more of a marketing tool than a revenue stream.
Doug
· 4 years ago
Peter you maybe should have read some of the previous posts ,but thanks for furthering what I was saying
Anonymous
· 3 years ago
Finally i found what i've been looking for!! Your site! ;) Great site, folks!! great graphics...;)
Kevin
· 3 years ago
What about membership based sites, where the full text of the article is for members only, and requires login at the main site?
The teaser text or partial text is simply to let members, and ysers (prospects) know that new content has been posted. The partial of course includes details as to the gist of the full text.
Partial feeds make sense to me in this sense. Am I wrong?
scobleizer
· 3 years ago
Kevin: I guess but the number of sites that I'm willing to be a member of to read the content is very very very very small. Are you the New York Times? That's about it.
Kevin
· 3 years ago
I am not the Are you the New York Times... but I am responsible for getting as many members of the company I work for (trade association), which has approx 6000 members, to come back to our web site. I think partial feeds are just fine in this regard. Perhaps such feeds are even a "member benefit". Am I misguided?
Anonymous
· 3 years ago
Have found everyting I needed on your site. And already put in my bookmarks :)
All Comments
Perhaps there should be a similar rule here. However, instead of Robert going off topic, it's when his posts seem...well...a bit high and mighty. When this happens and he wields the power of his readers around, we simply yell "Ego!"
Just a thought. ;)
Yes, we are the Old West still, at times.
The is a classic example of a site "not getting-it." They are only causing themselve more problems by alienating users and, at the same time, doubling their traffic costs by making customers download their pages twice. Once through RSS and another through their web page.
Though I do get ticked at such "canned" responses myself. I wouldn't have linked to them for that reason alone.
Ahmad: this is far beyond agreeing or not agreeing. They want my readers to visit and be dutiful little readers. And if having a snit is childish, then you might want to visit some other, more corporate blog. I think you got me confused with some press release or something.
People claim that partial feeds draw users to a site versus full feeds that people use to send people to a site.
Are you aware of any experiments or studies done on this subject?
For example, would you pay 10$/year to get full text feeds? Would you suffer ads in your feeds to get full text feeds?
Sorry, but the world is changing. Feeds are being monetized either directly or by asking folk to come to the site if they want more information.
It's not about making users into "slaves" anymore than requiring you to pay for a newspaper makes you "slave".
All of that said, I prefer full text feeds, but if a blog is consistently good enough I don't mind partial text.
We dont' do partial text across the board, only once a site approaches the million page per month band. And we only keep it partial if subscribers don't drop like flies.
Ultimately we're trying to find a balance between actually making money off the content that costs us money, and giving our users what they want, how they want it.
It's a struggle though. Especially when you get rants like yours, Robert. Rants that don't allow for any leniency. Any innovation. Any CHANGE.
I don't mind advertising, if done well. AKA, like Google. User-centric and all that.
If you think partial text are bettter for readers, then, fine, but offer BOTH!!! That way you are treating your readers with respect. Those who like partial text will feel better. Those, who, like me, prefer full text will feel better too.
The real question here, though, is how can we make feeds work for publishers. Ultimately whatever really works for publishers will really work for users too.
I don't feel partial text feeds are the answer, but they're better than doing nothing.
Instead of whining about how you're a "slave" (still dont' see how that's the case, since you can choose to leave, you can leave feedback, you can email / skype / msn / call me, etc) why not try and think up a solution?
As a publisher WE'RE trying. For our users, and for us.
And saying we should offer every option is a bit non-sensical as well. Would you ask that a newspaper offer both a paid and a free version, and let users choose? How, from a business perspective, do we justify full text feeds? More ads in them? A large segment of the market hates ads in feeds more than they hate partial text feeds.
This is a serious balancing act, and not an easy one.
As I said, we're trying. But that doesn't mean it's an easy trick to pull off.
Would that work?
As I said, we're still figuring this out. Happy to hear what you have to say :)
James: my feed includes both full-text and partial-text. I'll see if they can fix that to display my full-text feed.
Or, you might need to get a news aggregator that lets you see the full-text feed. Sorry.
I thought up the solution already: offer full text feeds. Damn, is it really that hard? If you have business models that need me to visit your Web site that's your problem, not mine.
Figure out how to fix the business model, if that's what is the problem.
And that won't help democracy.
The company you work for treats people like info slaves.
But, thanks for a new argument! Advertising is good for democracy! That's a good one.
Howso?
Holy crap, exaagerate much? I know that on my phone, I like partial text feeds, about twenty lines. That lets me decide if I want to see more or blow it off. one line's too little, but when it's a full text feed, then I have no choice in the matter.
Full text forces you to be a goose getting stuffed, and you have no choice about it.
That's bad too, by the way.
Hmm. Which is worse, the wrath of Scoble or the wrath of Winer?
I think this may demonstrate how inbred web 2.0 is becoming. No one who isn't related can...relate.
Full text feeds with ads have issues. Partial text feeds have issues. Some companies, like weblogs inc, do a full feed but strip all the links out making the feed readers "second class citizens" according to some.
Why aren't you willing to actually talk about this, instead of shoving what you want as gospel?
Because there is no independant third party that measures the metrics of how many eyeballs view an ad in an RSS feed. If you don't know how many people see an ad, there is no way to assign a value to it. Right now, as we both have previously discussed, there is no way to know how many people see anything in RSS.
You can't sell ads for that.
If AOL could support a worldwide bureau of reporters and publish an online newspaper, that would be great, but I don't see the industry business model for everyone else in that purchase.
Well his title isn't "Microsoft Debater", it's "Microsoft Evangelist". How many evangelists do you know that are willing to debate the existance of God? ;)
Black and White is defined by him, it's in his title.
Larry: Ever heard of web bugs? They have them in RSS feeds too. It's one way you can measure eyeballs on ads in RSS feeds.
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Marketing/web_bug.html
Full text feeds are nice, but you can't comment through them. You could write a blog post and trackback to the post, but not everyone respects/uses/allows trackbacks. So if you want to discuss the post with the author, you have to go to the site and post a comment anyway. (assuming they allow comment, most egotistical folk enjoy a one-way conversation. You to them).
Partial text feeds are ok, provided they give me an informative slug not just the first 200 or so characters. That's useless.
Remember, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. And to think I used to really love Scoble's down-to-earth'd-ness. Yeesh.
Heheh! I'm being told off by someone who won't even use his or her real name. What a hoot!
When you consider the auditing and due diligence that goes into tracking print circulation, there are really no metrics that match up online, especially for RSS.
I'm with you, Robert, don't bite my head off, but what you're asking is like telling Take Two to give away Grand Theft Auto 8 for free and then make their money by putting an ad in the game.
>>Advertising is good for democracy! That’s a good one.
Something has to support journalism, and ads are about all that is left. Imagine what this (or any other free) country would be like if there were no independant news operations.
It was the responder's automatic, robotic, non-human reply to his original post. Culminating in the insincere "...Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns", which read like someone in a cubicle had just hit a key marked 'end transmission'.
Am I right, Robert? Certainly it would be enough to get me angry...
Still love ya, brother.
The thing is we need to come up with a new business model. Come on, we can do it.
Remember 1987 when everyone said that the only way to make money is with banner ads? That was proven pretty wrong by those two guys from Stanford.
There's plenty of business models out here that don't require treating your users like jerks.
No full-text feeds? That's downright EVIL INCARNATE. Partial feeds suck losers dry. If you wanna f*ck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. And err, NewsGator says I have tons of subscribers. None of them for you. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. I’m not going to be your slave today. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. No sirreeeeeeeee. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. I am the most popular blogger around, you can't play with me. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah. I wanta shoot someone. As the only place different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.
If you can come up with a new business model, great. But that's not what you asked for in your rant. You asked for publishers to give you everything for nothing.
Readers, ultimately, have a choice. They can pay for their content with:
1. Money
2. Ads
3. Attention
4. Information
5. Time
Which, to me, means you either have spend to get ad-free feeds, you have to get ads in your feeds, you have to be willing to click through to a site, you have to be willing to give the comapnies info or you need to be willing to somehow give your time.
I'm all for new business models, but you can't just say a line like that without copping to something.
I agree with a previous commenter. This just sounds like you decided to throw a hissy fit at the start and now you're trying to spin it in such a way that it's intelligent.
You want a conversation? Fine. Let's have a conversation. But why does the conversation have to happen HERE? I feel so SLAVED by having to come to your site just to see if there are updates. This isn't a real conversation. It's more like leaving post-its on a bulletin board.
Wow. Brilliant phrasing. How true.
Um, you don't get around too much. Actually they do say that at advertising companies. Quite often, in fact.
There's a big difference between doing TV advertising and doing print advertising or doing outdoor advertising. It's all advertising, to be certain, but it is different.
There's a huge difference between user-friendly advertising and those other types (interstitials, banners, etc).
And, why have the conversation here? Cause I'm the loudmouth who posted this to start it off.
"There’s a huge difference between user-friendly advertising and those other types (interstitials, banners, etc)."
Yeah? What is it? I mean, Google's now doing animated ads, image ads, banner ads, video ads... How is Google all that different?
"And, why have the conversation here? Cause I’m the loudmouth who posted this to start it off. "
*sigh*
Fine, have it alone. Sometimes conversations require meeting in the middle. You've got a publisher right here talking to you, and you're pushing me away. So, fine, I'll go away.
This isn't conversation-friendly blogging.
Erm ... Jeremy, there's Scoble's cell phone number and email addres on this blog. You could, like, call him? It might be the fastest way to discover if you guys can work it out. Of course, we won't be able to follow the conversation word by word. We don't mind. Talk it over, see if you can agree on something and let us know if it was worth it.
I was trying to be ironic. If Scoble's asking for massive change, he needs to be ready to hear why things are the way they are (without prejudice) and he needs to be willing to have a conversation.
Telling me that he's right and the 5 reasons why he's right and why all publishers and advertisers are evil (except Google) isn't helping the conversation.
I want to hear if he really wants ads in feeds. What he feels this "new business model" should be based on, from a business perspective. How advertisers / publishers / users needs should balance.
I asked, and keep asking, because I have the sneaking suspicion this is Scoble in "uber elite mode" where he feels that what frustrates him is exactly what companies should respond to.
We call this living locally, applying globally. It's unhealthy for anyone, but especially someone with a platform.
With great power comes... What, the ability rant really ineffectively? ;-)
Besides, I won't invade Scoble's time to talk about this. I know how busy he is first hand. If this is still an issue when I'm on campus again in Feb we'll talk it out.
I'm not actually upset, I just don't see the room for discussion in Scoble's position.
ps. you should get some smileys for your blog it may help calm you down a bit. You can never have too many smileys right. :)
I publish full feeds, but only because I have nothing to lose. RSS is taking off, but it's still not largely understood by the average user. To be charging into 'full feeds are right all the time' at this point seems a bit strange to me.
Yes, I want to syndicate my content. But I respect the wishes of those that don't. Whether I subscribe to a partial feed will depend on the quality of the content.
If 'A List Apart' offered partial feeds, I would take them - gratefully (And not want to shoot them...).
Of course, I don't know who *this* post refers to and perhaps there is no reason for them not to have full feeds; but they obviously believe there is.
Are we talking Blogs only here or all RSS content...?
Most blogs at his point are either fluff or self promotional (at some level) - both these purposes have no reason not to publish full feeds...
The issue here, I guess is mostly monetisation.
I think an earlier commenter was fair to point out we need research and stats on full vs partial. I think it might show full feeds result in more subscribers and still get click throughs. I think it might also show that partial feeds, though resulting in less subscribers *might* have more targetted audiences and therefore yield greater results.
If users subscribe to partial feeds it may be because they know it's worth it. If they know it's worth it it may be because they trust the source. If they trust the source they may be more likely potential customers/consumers/whatever.
Maybe. We'll see.
Yeah, I have an AdSense block on the right side, and yeah, I make tens of cents every month from it, but I'm willing to sacrifice all that to run a little experiment.
I know this from my own use of RSS via Bloglines: I probably wind up visiting the sites where full text feeds are offered at least as much as the excerpt-feed sites. So we'll see if that holds true for the bottom-feeders who have run out of everything else to do on the Web, including porn, poker and Viagra, and therefore have only my site left to live for. ;-)
Robert, are you paying for that bandwidth? No, you aren't. But you are using it. Can you show me any data that shows RSS feed ads have a positive return greater than the cost of the bandwidth used? I mean, you're advocating something that most of the RSS users are going to *hate*, you should at least have SOME numbers showing the efficacy of your idea, or a link to such numbers.
Because otherwise, you're kind of trying to use your own sense of grandeur to get your way, and that's a bit, oh, I don't know, egotisitical?
While you've got this, uh, unharnessed energy thing going on right now, why don't you direct it over to the xbox team to find out what the hell ever happened to Risk on the Xbox?
Someone should swing for dropping that ball. Seriously.
And, considering that the feed theft industry is set to become a 1B$ one this year, that's a pretty big motivation.
BTW, I think to use full text should be good to readers.
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/1345
"Why not simply open the standard? Because it would mean Microsoft would lose control of a vital part of their revenue stream - sales of Office. Instead, by proposing the standard to the ISO they give the appearance of being open and honest, while actually retaining the control they currently enjoy."
dmad: tell me how you'll make money with advertising if you have no readers? I'd love to know that one!!
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/comments/feed/
it's just far away from your entires feed.
sorry for rushing to conclusion
If there is a solution, it is more old school approaches like combined efforts as in hurting where the money comes from.
As in full feeds: if your business modell requires partial feeds and your readers want full feeds, then at least be honest and say you are in there for the money, skip the feed at all and make standard SEO - because that is then what you are after: Visits from the search engines, not blog readers who have different interests than SE-visitors.
At the same time, my personal weblog where I talk about Identity and other things is availabel as a full-text feed (with RSS ads, if they're working properly...) because it is a discussion site, a 'blog', not a commercial concern.
More here:
http://cro.alienpants.com/index.php/2005/11/28/...
But I'd imagine that most folks aren't using RSS like Scoble does. As a matter of fact I'd imagine most folks use them not all that differently than they use their favorites.
So now he has to walk down the aisle and tell me when he's posted a "good" article. Justice is served!
In the days of paper journalism, you had to write your articles from the top down, because the editor might cut you off when you exceeded the column inches he had available. Something for blogs to consider.
Now, you saying a company will not get a link from a page you control just because they don't provide full feeds... Sorry but I am now removing YOUR feed from my list.
Michael S. Malone
Isn't leaving your slavishly derived CGM a fair trade for the attention that your site derives from the other zombie like readers deciding that your comments merit further investigation?
I thought you weren't reading feeds anymore...? Something something no time something skimming something Memeorandum something?
What changed?
(On a side note, I principally offer full-text feeds at TVT, and you managed - historically - to subscribe to the sole partial-text feed. Something upthread about "how hard is it to offer both?" Not hard at all.)
Ethan: I started reading my feeds again cause I realized I was missing the small things.
According to rss-specifications.com the very name in its self is its definition:
"RSS is defined as Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. RSS files are formed as XML files and are designed to provide content summaries of news, blogs, forums or website content."
"The feeds are generally simple headlines and brief descriptions if the user is interested they can click to see additional information."
"Initially rss feeds were intended for news headlines."
Personally excerpted feeds come across as teaser ads, not content - this is not what RSS/Feed Readers was designed for.
FWIW I don't think the small click through revenues warrant forcing people to visit the site in order to read unless the site has a huge readership. For most publishers I believe that your RSS publishing is better seen as developing a recognition of your expertise within your given industry. It's more of a marketing tool than a revenue stream.
great graphics...;)
The teaser text or partial text is simply to let members, and ysers (prospects) know that new content has been posted. The partial of course includes details as to the gist of the full text.
Partial feeds make sense to me in this sense. Am I wrong?