Mar 30 2008
RSS readers are a tool of the devil
I’ve noticed that I need to branch out my reading selections a bit - I mean, you can only read Instapundit, Rachel Lucas, and Slashdot for so long before you just have to step out of your comfort zone. Granted, I hit Google News fairly frequently, as well as Fark, but still… something was lacking. I needed a bigger picture of the world. Unfortunately, my mind has a limited memory capacity, and bookmarks just weren’t cutting it - yeah, I could go to the sites, but I never knew if there was anything worth reading ahead of time.
Annoyed by this, I got an RSS reader. It wasn’t hard - since I run Ubuntu, I could just do a nice, quick search in Add/Remove Programs, which is where I found PenguinTV. Works great, at least when it’s not hanging while I try to add another feed… like right now.
To be honest, I’ve been playing with it for the past few weeks now. Works great, no complaints… except for one - I can now read way more than I used to. I can now keep track of all of the tech blogs I’ve always wanted to keep track of. I could now keep track of all the other ancillary blogs that I’ve seen that I wasn’t motivated enough to visit daily but which I wanted to keep track of. Sounds great, right? Well, it was… until I received an idea:
I’m going to add every single blog in Rachel Lucas’ blogroll to my RSS feeds.
It seemed only fair. She added me to her roll, so the least I could do is help support my fellow blogroll compatriots by seeing what they have to say. Besides, since she gets a fair amount of her material from those sites, maybe I could preempt her once in a while. It’d be my way of getting inside her decision loop or something.
Sounds great, right? Where’s the problem? Well, there isn’t one… except, of course, that she has tons of blogs in her blogroll, so now I have the better part of 60+ blogs sitting in my syndication list. That’s a lot of blogs to keep track of. I’m at 65 right now and I’m only on the P’s. I’m going to be pushing near 90 by the time I’m done subscribing to them all.
That said, I am discovering something. Most blogs appear to be more than happy to allow RSS feeds, but not all of them. Some of them are “members only”. Some of them require you to send them an e-mail, at which point they’ll send you the feed. Some don’t have a feed at all. I do understand that many of them derive income from ads, so, consequently, they don’t want you reading their blog unless you can view their ads. The key, however, is not to restrict access to the RSS feed - just don’t give away the whole enchilada. Give out the first 100 words or something, but don’t make it more difficult than necessary for others to access your site. That’s only going to hurt your traffic in the long run… I know that because, well, if you’re one of those blogs that plays games with RSS feeds, I’m not going to visit you. I just don’t have time to check on you from time to time. I’m sorry.
Next up: How to back up my RSS feeds… Hardy Heron is coming out soon, and I’m looking forward to trying it. I’m not going to do it, though, if I don’t have some way of backing up all of my data, including things like RSS feeds and the like… I’m sure there’s an XML file sitting in my home folder somewhere.
Okay first I’m gonna tell you what I told Jennifer Hast this morning, too: get off Blogspot, get your own domain, and use Wordpress. Because I hate these Blogspot comment thingies. If I make it an official decree will you do it?
Second I’m gonna tell you that you’re exactly right about RSS feeds and bloggers who are stingy with them are making a big mistake.
Before I put my RSS feed up, which I did because I got emails requesting it CONSTANTLY, I did a bunch of research. Because I knew that if people were only reading through their reader, I wouldn’t get the traffic to my actual blog and thus my ad revenue would decrease.
So I read a bunch of articles all over the web about this issue and the consensus was TOUGH SHIT.
Because refusing to offer RSS, or even refusing to feed the whole post (by using teaser snippets) pisses people off. And, RSS users tend to spread links around, emailing their friends and such. Also, it is said that a high RSS reader number in a little graphic prominently displayed on your blog can be a form of promotion itself. “Wow, this blog has 500 RSS readers, it must be pretty good, I will read more of it.”
I was convinced and decided to try it, and sure enough, within a few weeks I had several hundred people signed on and my traffic went UP, as did my ad revenue (which wasn’t much to start with but it did go up a few bucks a week).
Anyway. Seriously, get off of Blogspot; it is making me angry that I can’t scroll from my comment up to your post to see what else you said. DO IT. I will help you because I truly do like your blog. Email me if you’re thinking about it and need help.