Truncated Blog Feeds - a Rant

[miss_s_b]

There is a setting on some blog platforms which means that you can set the RSS feed of your blog to be just an extract, or even worse, just a url, rather than the whole post. I would like to KILL whoever invented this setting. There is nothing more frustrating when doing the netcast than clicking through from what looks like an initially promising first paragraph to find that it is, in fact, the ONLY paragraph, or that the post descends into lunacy shortly thereafter. If this happens once, I am much less likely to bother clicking through to see if your post is interesting again.

If you truncate your blog post for RSS, that is entirely your right, but do bear in mind that it will have the following effects:

• It will make me pissed off with you, so if I DO click through I am much more likely to leave a nasty comment
• It will make me less likely to read your posts, and thus less likely to link to you
• In extreme cases, it will make me drop the feed from my list

Lest you think that this is just me moaning, studies show that this is how most other people react to truncated blog feeds too. Do yourselves a favour, truncators, and STOP IT.