The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since 1980 and is recognized globally as an expert on both technical and business issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed. He's a columnist for the Boulder Daily Camera and Linux Journal and frequently appears in other publications both online and in print. Additionally, Dave maintains four weblogs: The Business Blog at Intuitive.com, Ask Dave Taylor, Dave On Film, and GoFatherhood. Based in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs, as well as active member of his community and busy single father to three children.

NewsGator Online solves the full vs. partial RSS feed question

I know that NewsGator isn't the first to offer this capability in your RSS feeds, but I find it darn cool that one of the new display options in my favorite RSS reader, the web-based NewsGator Online, now has a "summary" view:

The article that's in my feed from Gizmodo is longer than what's displayed because Giz uses what we blog people call "full RSS feeds". But I no longer am at the mercy of their RSS configuration!

Of course, with every positive change comes a negative aspect, perhaps somewhat of an unexpected consequence...

To see the problem, let me expand that particular RSS entry so you can see everything that's in their feed.

First, though, what do you think might be a problem if an RSS reader algorithmically only presents a small subset of an article?

Are you guessing that some of the information in the feed is going to be masked, information that might just be an important -- or revenue generating -- part of the feed? You're right.

If you haven't checked out NewsGator Online recent, do note that there are many different ways you can now tweak your feed presentation:

Back to my point, though!

Check out what appears when I click on the "+" to view the full feed entry:

The banner ad just magically shows up.

I'm sure this is not what Gizmodo wants to have happen and what it's promising its advertisers when referring to the reach of its advertising. Worse, as far as I can tell, the minimized / full view switch looks like it's all done with CSS layers and JavaScript, so to the Gizmodo server, it has legitimately served up a banner ad. Problem is, it's to a hidden layer in the RSS reader itself.

Not good at all. Advertisers definitely do not want to pay to have their adverts "hidden" while they're being told that it was a legitimate display.

I have advertisements in my AskDaveTaylor feed too, and while as a reader I like this new feature in NewsGator Online, as a publisher I am now wondering what percentage of people who subscribe to my feed actually see those adverts on their screen.

Nonetheless, kudos to NewsGator for introducing this new option and giving readers the ability to determine if they want to get every word of a feed, even if it's a full article entry, or whether, like me, they prefer summaries where a click of the "+" icon reveals more information on the article and its title always leads you to the original blog entry anyway.

If you have a published RSS feed, do you think it's a good idea for individual subscribers to be able to get a reduced view of your data in their reader? If you're an RSS subscriber, do you prefer full feeds, partial feeds, or do you think solutions like this new NewsGator view are optimal?

Before you leave a comment, a tip: If you're interested in blogging, you should sign up for my Blogsmart News so you can stay up to date on the latest insider tips and ideas for your Internet business and marketing efforts. Sign up right now and you'll get a free copy of my "Insider's Guide to Blogging" ebook too!