Full or partial RSS feeds - Follow up

This is a fairly tough post to be writing because I really don't have any conclusive answers to the questions I posed and thoughts I put forward in my first post about RSS feeds.After I blogged about full vs partial feeds I decided to make my feeds partial. The only response I have had has been bad. Two people have emailed me saying that they are close to unsubscribing to my feed cause the feeds were partial. This, in theory, is enough to make me revert back to full feeds.Justin and I were chatting about this issue further and we both believe that SA bloggers need to start creating RSS subscribers as a point. Instead of simply blogging and rambling on, we should start doing whatever we can as bloggers to get the number of RSS subscribers up on our blogs. This will assist in creating hits for your blog irrespective of whether you use full or partial feeds.One of the biggest issues that has been raised with me is that people using RSS do so because they don't have time to read every blog they wish to at the blog itself. This makes sense to me actually. By offering partial feeds for about two weeks now, all I have really done is piss off RSS users.Justin then had a great point, he liked one of the posts on my blog - links to WP themems. He clicked through to my site and was then sent to the theme. He wanted to comment on my post but had already clicked 3 times to somewhere else and was over it. If I had full RSS feeds he could've clicked through to my post and the link site and seen bot and commented on both with far greater ease. Good point.I may have received a visit from Justin, but I missed out on his comment. Which is worth more to you as an author?So my conclusion is Full posts in RSS are far better for me and my audience. So back to full posts it is. As of now.

Five reasons to offer full posts in RSS and five reasons not to

Disclaimer: I am writing this post as a blogger, an RSS layman and an amatuer RSS user. These tips, reasons and justifications are from the perspective of someone who isn't an RSS expert but loves RSS like nothing before! I am an RSS addict and subscribe to tons and tons of blogs and websites that I read daily. I emplore you to tell me that I am wrong, give me better options and let me know what you think.I have recently been very interested in the RSS/Blog debate.In case you didn't know that there was a debate, there is. It's in my head for the moment and I think I'm on to something here.The traditional argument when it comes to RSS and blogs is whether to display your full content in your RSS reader or to display an intro from the original post. This is definitely a good debate. Here is what I think:5 Reasons to provide full RSS feeds:1. Keep the reader happy - Many people don't use RSS in SA. That's a fact (I think). Those that do use RSS readers do so for a reason. I like to view all the blogs in one place, quickly and easily.2. Your readers aren't stupid - They know that you are shortening your content on RSS so they will visit your site. Don't mock them and don't confuse them with badly written intro's that don't explain the post.3. RSS is a challenge - The challenge is this: Offer a full post via RSS and still get readers on your blog. It's not that hard... write something interesting. Refer to another blog post of yours and link to it, refer to a photograph. They will follow the links or choose to read the post in your environment if the post is good enough.4. Full post = comments - If your post is good enough it doesn't matter if the readers has access to the whole thing, they wont be able to comment unless they are on your blog. Get them there.5. Build up a stable network - Many of the top blogs in the world have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. There is a reason for this. If you have 10 000 subscribers you are almost promised that at least 60% will read the post, that means that if 10% of that 60% comment and visit your blog you are set. Without this RSS subscriber base you are fighting every post to get people to read, visit and comment.5 Reasons to provide partial RSS feeds:1. Full posts get no love - There is a strong possibility that providing full posts in RSS will take visits away from your blog.2. Splogs - Splogs use RSS feeds to gather the content that they copy and rip-off. Limit your posts, stop the sploggers.3. Write a good post - If you are a good writer or good blogger you know your audience and you know how to write for them. This means that providing an intro to them via RSS should entice them to visit. Therefore full posts are redundant and intro's better.4. The SEO effect - Believe it or not splogs affect your SEO. If you offer a full post on RSS splogs can take your post, duplicate it and mess with your Google pagerank and Technorati ranking.5. Reminders - Partial posts can act as a reminder that your blog exists. Many RSS subscribers have tons of blogs they read. Your intro post could spark a memory of your blog, get the reader interested and send them over for the whole blog experience. While a full post will let them read and move on, never returning to your blog.Knowing that some of the top blogs in the world have hundreds of thousands of RSS subscribers, I would love to know what the top RSS blog readership count is here in SA? Anyone have any ideas? I don't but I am almost sure that I will knock myself out with a potatoe in a sock if any SA blog has more than 10 000 subscibers.