Unbelievably Meta Post Of The Day

This is an amazing piece on the value of full-text RSS feeds for both consumers and producers alike, even though it basically allows you to see an ad-free version of your own site, and ads are typically the sole revenue stream. The short version: people will only read your RSS feed if you offer full text, and the people doing the reading (who are often producers themselves) are more likely to forward stuff around and link to your site directly, therefore raising your page views.

I love RSS feeds, but I also have this crazy obsession with keeping the number of unread stories low, so I find myself frantically reading through them sometimes, instead of internalizing the content, and I have to slow it down. I probably have about 100 active RSS feeds going. And as the author says, you can browse RSS feeds offline, and catch up on all your blogs if you're not around WiFi or if you're on a plane. I've done that as well.