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Why Full Text Feeds Actually Increase Page Views (The Freakonomics Explanation)
from the why-full-feeds-make-sense dept
Last week, the Freakonomics blog got some extra attention by moving the blog to the NY Times. Of course, the blog had been in support of the immensely popular Freakonomics book, but the blog has taken on a life of its own. What was interesting was how people reacted to the news. While there were a few congratulations thrown in, the vast majority of the comments on the blog when the news broke was to complain about the NY Times' decision to switch the RSS feed from full text to partial text, where anyone who wanted to read the whole thing would have to click through. This has kicked off yet another round in the debate with some thoughtful discussions about full vs. partial feeds. Techdirt, of course, offers full feeds and always has. This means that plenty of people who read this site absolutely never visit the site. We're fine with that for a variety of reasons (one of which being that our business model isn't dependent on page views or ad impressions).
However, in our experience, full text feeds actually does lead to more page views, though understanding why is a little more involved. Full text feeds makes the reading process much easier. It means it's that much more likely that someone reads the full piece and actually understands what's being said -- which makes it much, much, much more likely that they'll then forward it on to someone else, or blog about it themselves, or post it to Digg or Reddit or Slashdot or Fark or any other such thing -- and that generates more traffic and interest and page views from new readers, who we hope subscribe to the RSS feed and become regular readers as well. The whole idea is that by making it easier and easier for anyone to read and fully grasp our content, the more likely they are to spread it via word of mouth, and that tends to lead to much greater adoption than by limiting what we give to our readers and begging them to come to our site if they want to read more than a sentence or two. So, while many people claim that partial feeds are needed to increase page views where ads are hosted, our experience has shown that full text feeds actually do a great deal to increase actual page views on the site by encouraging more usage. It's the same thing that we've talked about in other areas of the content industry. Taking value away from users to try to force a specific action is almost always going to be less desirable than providing people what they want. So while Dubner and Levitt may have to argue with the NYTimes beancounters who will claim that partial feeds will increase revenue, they may want to use the lessons they learned from their own book to recognize that the opposite may be true. Full feeds can actually drive more traffic overall.
However, in our experience, full text feeds actually does lead to more page views, though understanding why is a little more involved. Full text feeds makes the reading process much easier. It means it's that much more likely that someone reads the full piece and actually understands what's being said -- which makes it much, much, much more likely that they'll then forward it on to someone else, or blog about it themselves, or post it to Digg or Reddit or Slashdot or Fark or any other such thing -- and that generates more traffic and interest and page views from new readers, who we hope subscribe to the RSS feed and become regular readers as well. The whole idea is that by making it easier and easier for anyone to read and fully grasp our content, the more likely they are to spread it via word of mouth, and that tends to lead to much greater adoption than by limiting what we give to our readers and begging them to come to our site if they want to read more than a sentence or two. So, while many people claim that partial feeds are needed to increase page views where ads are hosted, our experience has shown that full text feeds actually do a great deal to increase actual page views on the site by encouraging more usage. It's the same thing that we've talked about in other areas of the content industry. Taking value away from users to try to force a specific action is almost always going to be less desirable than providing people what they want. So while Dubner and Levitt may have to argue with the NYTimes beancounters who will claim that partial feeds will increase revenue, they may want to use the lessons they learned from their own book to recognize that the opposite may be true. Full feeds can actually drive more traffic overall.
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More Likely to Comment
Now as for the NYTimes... When have they ever been smart about their on-line content?
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Freakonomics and partial feeds
See also:
FreakonomicsSucks.com (but not really)
Regards,
Erik
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Full length feeds
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Personally...
Then again... I use Firefox with Adblock...
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Broken Link...
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Full Text
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:)
Almost as annoying is dotnetkicks.com, which does have full text feeds, but you have to click on a link in the feed to go to dotnetkicks then click on a link to get to the actual article it reference :/
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Agreed!
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How could you possibly know this if you've always used full feeds?
"Techdirt, of course, offers full feeds and always has"
Don't get me wrong; as a user, I'm all for full text feeds, but I'm wondering how you can claim this if you've never tested partial feeds out.
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Right on the money!
An example is my reaction to this post - in Google Reader I hit "Share", and then came here to comment. Would I have done these things for a partial feed? Probably not.
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Absolutely true
I almost stopped reading p2pnet.net but fortunately it moved to full text.
Especially in Technet, it's quite frequent for me to read a news story and click on various links contained within which in turn become page hits.
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You give you what you get
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thanks for the lesson
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thanks for the lesson
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Never knew the reality
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Not sure I believe you
More page views than what? You haven't ever tried partial feeds so you don't know.
It doesn't sound like an argument that would convince Dubner and Levitt.
Or, at least your experience with running Techdirt can't have provided any real evidence that full text is better for page views than partial, can it?
I would love to see some tangible evidence for the bean counters, because full text clearly it does provide a better user experience. A handwavy "halo effect" argument is not concrete enough for them.
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In the case of The New York times one is required to log in and have one name recorded just to read a News Paper.
Thanks but NO THANKS.
In the case of ABC, MSNBC and CBS they apparently believe that current day desktop computers are equivalent to TV sets so everything is streamed video which does not play on my computers.
This leaves news sources like BBC, International Harold Tribune, Slashdot and Techdirt. For comics there is Dilbert and UserFrendly.
CNN is half and half. Half way between readable and non playing streamed video.
Assuming that my experience is typical that means that old line news papers in order to protect their paper business model are fast becoming irrelevant given that even though the news is better one can not access their site by business decision design.
On the other side the likes of ABC, MSNBC and CBS are not relevant either with another business model that is failing due to the Dan Rather effect; the assumption that they are the only game in town so people and equipment will just have to do what they demand that you do to access their content.
The failure in all this is the Nollywood business model.
http://www.thisisnollywood.com/
Nollywood, Nigeria's booming film industry, is the world's third largest producer of feature films. Unlike Hollywood and Bollywood, however, Nollywood movies are made on shoe-string budgets of time and money. An average production takes just 10 days and costs approximately $15,000.
Yet in just 13 years, Nollywood has grown from nothing into a $250 million dollar-a-year industry that employs thousands of people. The Nollywood phenomenon was made possible by two main ingredients: Nigerian entrepreneurship and digital technology.
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Another thing to consider
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Re: More Likely to Comment
-Jim
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Full Feeds Lead To Comments
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Give readers a choice of full text feeds or partia
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Measurement is great - what about re-use / splogge
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Measurement is great - what about re-use / splogge
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Re: Measurement is great - what about re-use / spl
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Demand rules....
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I've got a workaround
http://labs.echoditto.com/fulltextrss
Here's a direct link to the feed after being passed through the service:
http://labs.echoditto.com/projects/fulltextrss/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffreakonomics.blogs.nyti mes.com%2Frss2.xml
I understand the position that Mr. Dubner's in, but the advertisers are flat out wrong -- they're fighting a war that will inevitably be lost. The sooner they realize this and adapt to the way readers want to consume content, the better.
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Full Feed is the way to go...
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogofknowledge
http://feeds.feedburner.com/thinkboutit
http://feeds.feedburner.com/justlaugh
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Full feeds vs short feeds
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partial feed means click for really, really, reall
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Full feeds not always best
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You just never know
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Partial Feeds Must Go
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From Bontb
I had that happen to me, some guy opened blog and just grabed my feeds , checking out that he had at some keywords better ranking than i did!
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Full-Text "Scrapping"
So are there any lists out there with full text AP-type of news feeds that people are welcome to pull?
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interesting points
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Full feeds
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Full RSS Feeds From Any Website
I have seen a ton of people using their service. Plus, I have never run across a website like WizardRSS.com that actually lets you get the full feed from any website on the Internet.
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islami sohbet
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Full feed generator
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full feed will be target ..... like wp robot :D
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guest
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Good Post
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Nice
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Kind of doesn't matter
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interesting
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Thanks for the insights!
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Makes sense
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