This has nothing whatsoever to do with RSS full-text feeds. I happily use full-text feeds on my personal blog, for example, and recommend that others feel free to do the same.

I do actually prefer the truncated posts, as I can easily pick which ones I want to read (save for later) that way. It doesn’t really bother me either way.

I’m sure you’d like click-throughs so you can get ad revenue but us RSS readers want an enjoyable feed experience. So I think a compromise would help us both.

Either do a real teaser or a abbreviated post. A good example of a teaser RSS feed is Ars Technica. They write succinct a two line blurb written explicitly for the RSS feed, and not just pulling the first 300 characters of the post. For articles I’m interested in, I almost always click through. On the flip side, if it’s an article I’m not interested in, it’s easy to tell right off the bat.

Core77 is a site with nice abbreviated feeds and a clear jump/fold point. They almost always have a picture to draw people in and a paragraph or so. The text almost always stops at the end of a paragraph (as opposed to mid-sentence or mid-word) but there’s always a jump with more content on the click-through. So you get the meat in the RSS feed and the potatoes with the click through. Plus the feeds tend to be of an ordered length so it makes for efficient reading. But it’s not so much content that people would (probably) gank their content.

I think the Core77 model is the best for RSS feeds. But I’d be happy with dedicated teaser RSS feeds like Ars if you’re concerned about comment snatchers. .

But that’s just one RSS _floss reader’s opinion. :)

Good luck getting back on Google.

Cheers.

Nice to know it’s only temporary though!

A question for you. I love zinio and hate wasted trees, but for mental_floss I’d be willing to subscribe to which ever is more profitable to you. So which is it, do you benefit more from tree killing paper versions or the potentially more friendly digital version?