Fred On Something… talks good stuff about blog titles, but I think people should take things a bit farther: full content feeds. Yes, I admit, I am quite an offline-whore when it comes to keeping up with the blogs I read. There are some exceptions, but usually this is because: * they are well designed and it is quite a pleasure to look at the sites * they contain photos/pictures or other media that is worth looking at (and I hate to admit it: this is the most missing feature of feed readers - lack of support for offline readers like me: download the pictures, even if they are just linked and not feed-enclosures!) * I like to look at their blogroll, sidebars or I just stumble there because I want to scan the archives or whatever.
The list of feeds I read regularly is quite extensive, unordered and just sorted by date. Usually I read the like this, flag items I want to check out later for link surfing or posting. But then there are those “I will only give you a title and 100 character”-posts that usually only generate one response by me: kick them out of the feed list as soon as I have seen too many un-interesting posts. Bloggers out there: if you want to get read - do not force people to browse your site! Make the site’s visit speak for itself but don’t cripple the content! Hey, even place ads in your feeds, those I can filter out - but a feed’s text that is incomplete usually is not worth the hassle of going to the flagged item again as soon as I am online.
Maybe I am overreacting, maybe everyone else has broadband at home and doesn’t do offline anymore. Nevertheless - I can’t think of any reason why feeds should be crippled. Bandwidth and Traffic may be a reason - but when your feeds generate that much traffic you either need to upgrade your server or whatever… I certainly don’t believe many out there will have these problems. And when I look at my traffic logs it seems the search-engine-spiders are generating way more traffic than anyone could do with feeds.
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