A friend of mine recently sent me a very heated email, chastising me for not visiting his forums more often. It’s not that I don’t want to, I just never have the time to sit and navigate from one set of forums to the next. In all honesty, if he would only enable his RSS (atom) feeds, I could easily subscribe via Google Reader and pick and choose which threads I’d like to read and/or respond to. His argument against this was that if he did that, I wouldn’t go visit his site to access the forums.
:shock: Uh … helloooooooooo???? That’s why I don’t come around as often, you numbnuts …
He furthers this argument by saying that enabling feeds would open him up to “exploits” and “serious security risks” but I have yet to see anything published for his forum software packages. :roll:
What seems painfully obvious still escapes him. He sees RSS as damaging to his traffic. Of course he hasn’t at all studied his logs, he just watches the freebie counter at the bottom of his forum’s index page. I’ve tried sending him several “pro RSS” articles and varied plumes of market research touting the positive effects of using feeds, but he refuses to budge.
I say if your content is good, visitors will both subscribe to read AND visit to respond/engage, but he disagrees … and so the argument continues.
The thing is, I am a member of dozens of forums that I would *love* to sit and peruse at my leisure; but sadly I do not have the time any more to do this. With the availability of subscription feeds, I could subscribe via my reader and interact more – essentially making both me AND the forum owner happy. I want to email each of them and scream, “For the love of God, PLEASE give me an RSS or Atom feed, a plain XML file or an RDF … ANYTHING!”
LOL
So what do y’all think? Am I wrong? Are feeds too much trouble?
DualDenz
if you will please forgive me for going offtopic once again, but i have to let you know what good friends i have :D.
I’ve been offered several kittens already, but turned them down for obvious reasons. One of my friends did however think that his offer would be too good to pass up on.
he was right ^^
http://img403.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc001520070529kl9.jpg
is he a beauty or what? i’ve been thinking about naming this little monster just that, “Monster”
whadaya think?
Rick
He’s missing the RSS bus, and missing out on a lot of readers in the process. He can think what he wants to about subscriptions, but the reality is that he’s not maximizing his readership unless he provides feeds for his readers. There’s too much competition to ignore how people are accessing content.
You’re correct on this one.
Ike
No – feeds are not a bother. His metrics are.
Show him how to go through Feedburner – which gives an excellent package of stats. Also, he can dress up his feed with Feed Flares that can showcase other content that’s on his site.
In those instances, the Feed gets consumed, and also drives traffic.
Nicki
@DD: Awwww, he is ADORABLE!!! “Monster” it is! :mrgreen:
@Rick/Ike: I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve told him about Feedburner, and offered to send screenshots of some of my feed data and he refused.
Oh well, you can lead a horse to water …
Doc
Perhaps there are ads on his site which wouldn’t get proper attention via RSS readers.
W/ regard to Google reader – you really like that? I’m up to my arms in RSS feeds now and am going to have to get something to consolidate them all or risk missing good stuff.
Rick
Doc, no matter how many feeds you have, it takes longer to actually go to the site and read them for yourself. I think we all have a few too many feeds in our readers, and I certainly don’t have time to read each and every one. I usually just scan them and pick and choose the ones that are particularly interesting. Keeping them organized in folders really helps, too. It takes some work to keep your reader up, but none of that is the fault of RSS.
Nicki–Some people don’t want to be inconvenienced with facts!
Ike
I believe you can add ads to your feed as well….
Nicki
@Doc: heh, if there are, I never see them … *pats AdBlock* … I don’t think so though.
re: Google Reader – yeah, I do. I didn’t in the very beginning and dropped it within a week, but over the course of the last year or so, the number of feeds to which I was subscribing began to be a bit much for my beloved Sage, and importing them into Thunderbird was a nightmare. Google has really done a faboo job updating Google Reader and quite honestly I refuse to go without it now. lol
@Rick: I guess so! ;p
Oh well, his loss I say … but it *is* something I would like to see “freebie” board services pick up and run with. Like EzBoard … there’s a TON of little hobby-related boards that I would love to read if I had the time, and/or which don’t have very many visitors so the posts are few and spaced out a bit. With feeds, I could be updated instantly instead of having to login to EzBoard’s cheesy system every time I wanted to reply to check for new posts/replies. :roll:
Nicki
Eeek, Ike snuck in while I was typing my response. ;)
@Ike: Yes, you can do that with the services provided by FeedBurner, or if you use blogging software like WordPress, there are many monetizing plugins/solutions out there for those as well.
The guy won’t get it through his thick skull that there are limitless possibilities … and I would be happy to help him setup anything he needed. (or maybe that’s what bugs me most — that the bugger won’t let me help him! ;p)
Ike
By the way – is that a new favicon?
Nicki
er…nope. But I have been thinking lately that I need to get a new one. :)
DualDenz
to go on topic again :D
i think i understand what he means, flawed as the logic may be. I don’t use feeds myself and wouldn’t do so in the future either. visiting forums and blogs personally kinda gives me the feeling that’s it’s a personal visit, using a feed would give me the idea that i’m just leeching their data and don’t care about the people who host it. it’s probably weird, but that’s how it feels to me (weird may not even be the best description, how can one form of a digital visit feel different from another).
Devilish Southern Belle
I read almost exclusively through my reader. I still visit plenty of sites when I show up to comment!