I mean, kinda.
I was just asked this question the other day so I’m answering here because blogging is cool.
The point of an RSS feed is for people to read your content elsewhere (hence the last part of the acronym, Syndication, as in, broadcasting elsewhere). Probably an RSS reader. But RSS is XML, so in a sense, it’s a limited API to your content as well, which people can use to do other programmatic things (e.g. show a list of recent posts on some other site).
If you hate the idea of people seeing your work outside of your website, then don’t have an RSS feed. It doesn’t prevent your site from being scraped (nothing really does), but it isn’t inviting people to your content the way RSS does.
But…
Don’t you want people to read your stuff? Having an RSS feed is saying, “I’m happy to meet you where you are. If you like reading stuff over there, then great, read it over there. I just like it when you read my stuff.”
It’s hard enough to get people to care about your work anyway. Being extra protective over it isn’t going to help that.
Who’s comic book are you more likely to buy? The webcomic you read and laugh at every day because they make it so easy and free to read? Or the comic that you can’t see because you have to pay for to get a peek and have to roll the dice on whether you’re going to like it or not?
What consultant are you more likely to hire? The one that shares a ton of knowledge about their skills and has firmly established themselves as a publicly verifiable expert? Or a consultant with a homepage that’s just a pricing sheet and phone number?
What blog are you more likely to trust a recommendation from? One that you subscribe to on purpose because you like their content and writers? Or some site you randomly landed on?
What web do you want to exist? One with fun interoperable possibilities? Or walled gardens?
I have subscribed rss of your site, and many other sites (some have ads in rss) ads are also in the rss reader I use – practically speaking, it is the rss reader that takes the money for the content you publish.
On the other hand – thanks to the fact that I get rss from your site – I know that something new has appeared, I can go and read if it’s interesting. If the site doesn’t have rss – I don’t know if something new has appeared there – I can go to the site and check (and get ads) – but I’m often too lazy to look somewhere, or I’ll forget that there was something interesting on that site and I’ll never go back there – if there was rss on the site that was interesting – I’d definitely subscribe to it and come back there (because I would know with rss that it’s worth it).
RSS is seemingly a loss from unseen ads – but the profit from keeping the user’s attention all the time – it’s like losing money from ads today – but to gain money from fifteen ads next month :)
Good post. As Tim O’Reilly said, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy.
I configured my RSS reader to open the original site when I click on the news link. I don’t like the integrated browser in any RSS app.
I use rss reader just to see what’s new. I see titles there and a bit of description. While I could just click on the entry and read it, I always open the page with the content instead of reading it in rss reader as I somehow like it better.
I read a lot of sites through RSS. One thing a site can do is only display a summary teaser in the RSS reader, and require a click-through to read the rest.
About ads, I block them all so it doesn’t — hey, how’d that ad get through? Say, that’s kind of interesting. And good on you for hosting you own ads!
I use RSS a lot, not to avoid ads or visiting sites, but to follow new content on sites I like. That’s how I found this post.
The trend a few years ago was to leave RSS feeds and use Twitter or Facebook. When Google closed Google Reader, their suggestion was to use Google+ (which no longer exists). I was lucky not to do that because then these platforms started picking what users would see and we end up missing new content. Facebook even used this to make money.
Some of my feeds only show 1-3 paragraphs of text and then have a “continue to read” link. I’m fine with that, after all I don’t see a problem with visiting the website. Some even have static banners, which again isn’t a big problem.
RSS is a simple way to follow a site. It works and doesn’t rely on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I can use a service like Feedly or The Old Reader, or run a server myself (eg: Tiny Tiny RSS). It works well for users.
RSS feeds are also a great tool for site owners. There’s no need to rely on social networks and newsletters (that cost money), worry about deliverability and spam reports, if Facebook is showing it to less users, etc. Users subscribe to your feed and that’s it. If they like the title, they’ll read the content and/or visit your site.
I subscribe to CSS Tricks via RSS, and while I could read the articles in the reader, I take the links to the website—it’s nicer-looking here, and there’s no chance of content/graphics missing. IMO, RSS is nothing but a win for sites that use it; the ones that don’t just don’t exist to me.
i subscribe your website from google reader recommendations(many years ago) -_-
You perhaps miss three main reasons why RSS feeds are important for a website :
1. RSS feeds (and RSS readers) are not algorithmicaly filtered, instead of Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin feeds. So your readers see ALL your news (just like Twitter allows it).
2. You can easily produce several RSS feeds, one for each of your content thematics. One for all your news, one for products annoucements, one for financial results, one for new partnerships, one for each category of producs/services… So you can address each of of your visitor’s needs, without overwhelming them with news they don’t need. 35% of world websites are build with WordPress, which natively produce RSS feeds on every subsets of news. Over olatforms like Drupal or Joomla allows you to easily create RSS feeds.
3. RSS feeds are flexible to reuse. So your branded (and teuncated) content can easily be shared through anh editorial and social platform/services
Serge Courrier (from the open project RSS Circus)
I’m not sure what the issue is here. The RSS does not need to contain all the content – just the headline and intro para maybe. The rest is accessed via link to the host site surely?