Yesterday we made a decision to truncate the RSS feeds on AboveTheLaw for the next thirty days. RSS subscribers will get a headline and first paragraph, but will have to click to the site to get full stories.
We’re far from the first to do it. In fact just recently Gawker joined many more mainstream publishers like the WSJ and FT in truncating its feeds, much to the chagrin of Felix Salmon, who has written extensively on the topic. In our case, the move was prompted as much by my annoyance at the growing group of content thieves scraping our content via RSS (I dealt with two yesterday), as it was by a desire to get some commercial benefit from those readers. We’re a small company with limited resources, and I got fed up wasting valuable time trying to track down these parasites who aren’t only benefiting from our editors’ hard graft but also potentially messing with our search engine results by creating duplicates of our content on other sites.
I say “we” made the decision, but it was hardly unanimous. In fact, our executive editor here, Matt Creamer, bets it won’t work. Here’s an excerpt of an email he sent me on the topic:
“The way we’ll increase traffic in a meaningful way on Above the Law won’t be through optimizing how the site gets distributed on what’s looking increasingly like a legacy way of viewing the web. I think there’s a risk that rather than push visits and views you’ll alienate people and simply lose their subscription. It’s subjective, but that’s how I react to truncation. I unsubscribe. I don’t think you can change behavior by funneling in this way. And in Above The Law’s case you probably have longtime RSS subscriptions read by people who are set in their ways and I’d imagine they won’t be terribly happy. They won’t necessarily just do what we want them to do. On the scraping front, there are plenty of ways for anyone who wants to get around the truncation.”
He may well be right, and I doubt it’s going to stop the more determined or sophisticated scrapers from stealing our stuff, although the last couple I’ve dealt with seemed to be just grabbing whatever they could rather than operating particularly strategically. And, of course, we’re already dealing with a flood (well, 30 or so) of complaints from angry lawyers who liked their full RSS feed and don’t want to have to click through to the site and reward us with an ad impression for our efforts. But I think you have to test these things, so we’re going to press ahead for another 29 days with the experiment to see what affect it has on the incidence of scraping and our traffic. In the meantime I can only offer my apologies to the annoyed readers and hope that they’ll consider clicking through to the site.
how do we express our dissatisfaction? By unsubscribing?
Or commenting, of course.
I've been using teh Intertubes for years, since 1996, and I haven't ever figured that RSS shit out. The vast majority of people are like me.
RSS feed truncation = FAIL; Creamer hit the nail on the head here, he deserves a raise…
I hate the truncation (just as I hate having to click though after the jump). I don't care if you put ads in the feed like other blogs do. It is sooo much more convenient to read everything in one place. And I click through occasionally to see pictures and read comments.
Unsubscribed. Put ads and a retweet button in the feeds. Problem solved. For a new media company you seem to be approaching your problems with old solutions. There are scripts and such to take care of the thieves.
Count me as another annoyed lawyer who reads the site via RSS feed (through Google Reader). WSJ's method of including ads in the feed content doesn't bother me.
WSJ Law Blog recently truncated their feed as well.
Creamer will be proven correct. I will be suspending all visits to Breaking Media sites for the next 30 days and encourage everyone else to do the same. Vote with your feet!For those who cannot live without the content, I encourage you to keep the site in your RSS feed, then do a Google search for the article's title a few hours later. Then use the "Cached" feature to see the content and not generate a hit on the Breaking Media site. Using this tactic, I bet we can reduce hits on these sites by a tremendous amount and make them change the policy. Power to the people!
I completely agree with Creamer. When WSJ's Law Blog truncated earlier this month, I unsubscribed. While I enjoy the content, I don't enjoy it enough to click through and follow up the stories. I'm incredibly disappointed by the decision to truncate at ATL. I hope others feel the same way and we can get back to the way things used to be. I'm with James. Bring back the full RSS feed and just include ads.
I agree. I don't have time to click through every time to see if I want to read what's on the site. I unsubscribe, and maybe I will go visit the site again and maybe not. In this case, I'll probably delete the ATL feed unread for the next 30 days, and by then maybe I won't care about the site anymore.
Please, just put ads in the feed. Truncation means the site is unusuable with Google Reader for mobile, which is the way I (and half the people I know who have Blackberrys) read your sites.
At certain places of employment, many websites are blocked, including this one. The only way to share articles with such individuals is through a feed reader. By refusing to publish the entire article, I can no longer share the articles with others in that situation, and because I annoy easily, I won't be clicking on the links to read the articles and copy/paste to send to my friends.Good luck with the experiment.
Yes, ads are fine; truncation is obnoxious at best!
Trying to fend off scrapers through truncating the RSS feed is a losing battle. It is incredibly easy to scrape content from a webpage at daily intervals because pretty much any CMS has a predictable DOM. If it's really about them and not just about losing clicks, they will get around it. If it's really about clicks, add ads to the feed. Sure you lose out on some impressions for impression-based banners, but such is the cost of new media.
This is an awful idea. I read everything through google reader and am very unlikely to click to read the rest of any story.
Loathe truncation! Will unsubscribe if it becomes permanent. Ads in the RSS feed don't bother me, either.
unsubsribe. bye-bye.
I don't like it either. I read your site on my mobile device and it's a pain to pull up your full web pages on my device. I totally recognize your prerogative, but I hope it remains only an "experiment."
I was annoyed by the WSJ Law Blog's truncating their feed, but the way they did it is better. Instead of giving the first paragraph, they give a brief summary of the article. It makes it easier for me to decide if I want to click through. What you are doing on ATL is just annoying.I probably won't unsubscribe, but I won't be clicking through. I also won't be reading many articles. I might come to ATL to read articles if I am bored but really, I just find this to be an annoyance. Also, the fact that it took complaints before you issued a statement is kind of insulting.
Scrapping seems like an interesting topic. How is content stolen from small content-generating blogs by others, and how is it used to increase their revenue/ decrease yours. I would actually appreciate a blog on this topic.
We will most definitely post on the subject at greater length.
Ads = fine. Truncation = fail.I will only click through to stories that interest me, which means I will only view ads for those stories. Provide the whole story via RSS, with ads, and I will view almost every story even if I don't read the entire thing.
I'm a law librarian, and I hate the truncation!
The sad truth is that truncating the feed only causes me to read less stories. I don't even bother with the morning docket or non-sequiturs anymore. If this continues I'll probably just unsubscribe altogether.I do agree that a short summary of each article might be more helpful than what is currently being done.
it's going to be a shame not seeing your feed bold up anymore when Google Reader refreshes well I guess it's not even in Google Reader anymore so it can't refresh…so confusing when you unsubscribe.I'll try and remember to check back in 30 days. Squirrel —>
My complaint is that the truncation often does not give enough content to let me know if I want to click through or not. It doesn't give a full paragraph, it removes all the links, and on things like Morning Docket, I don't get to see anything about any of the later stuff in the most, which might be of more interest than the stuff earlier in the post. I use a RSS feeder to avoid having to visit a million pages every day, and sites that specifically make me do that get unsubscribed fast. I'm down to only three tag feeds from Lifehacker and maybe two posts a day total from all those three, after formerly having many more, just because of Gawker doing this. I don't want ATL to go the same way.
I'm quite angered by this change. I don't have time to click through to ATL; find a way to monetize what you put on your feed. Include ads if you want; I don't care. Just stop wasting my valuable time.
Truncation is annoying. I'm not coming to the site again.
If you are going to truncate at least give the content up to the jump. Cutting it down to four lines will greatly reduce the likelihood of me reading the story.
Unsubscribed. I'll check back in 30 days to see if the RSS feed is worth keeping.
Annoying!
Not a fan at all. Kind of the point of having an RSS feed.
Creamer = SmartDo you guys own Lawyerist? b/c its RSS just got truncated too…
Give me ads before truncation. My last visit to your site.
Another annoyed lawyer.
"traffic whoring," "thieves," "parasites"…Is that really the kind of language you want to use to describe your RSS subscribers? Two words regarding the decision to truncate and Jonah Bloom's explanation: BIG MISTAKE.
Why make your customer's life more difficult?
Can you just put ads in feeds? I love full RSS feeds. Thanks.
I'm unsubscribing. I'll check back in 30 days, and if you haven't fixed it, I'm out.
Count me in as someone who is unsubscribing due to the truncation. There just isn't enough time in the day to have to click on each story individually, and it is no fun to read full websites on a mobile device when Google Reader works so well. I have no objection to you putting the ads in the posts- there is nothing wrong with you trying to make some money for your hard work. But truncating the feeds? Not a good move.
I really hate the truncation. Unlike others, I do not intend to unsubscribe, because it is still more convenient to decide within my RSS feeder which articles I want to read than to remember to check ATL every day. Nonetheless, count me as a disgruntled reader.
I'm extremely dissatisfied and thinking about unsubscribing. Truncation is terrible for people who want to keep up with many different blogs, and I'm going to prioritize the ones that make it easier for me to read.
I understand the need to prevent rip-offs, but truncation really kills the usefulness of aggregators like Google Reader. It's a trade off you are entitled to make, but I think you'll find that readership loss is not worth the marginal increase in control over your content.I personally really hope the full RSS comes back…
Goodbye. BTW — scraping via click is f'n trivial. Only true morons can't figure out how to scrape a "click me to read more" link.
Stop Truncation NOW!!!!
Truncation is a fail. I won't be bothered to click through and it's also impossible if I've downloaded my feed before getting on the subway and read it while on my long underground travel home. Count NYers out.
After the truncation started, I found myself skipping most ATL articles anyway to be honest. (Not that they were any less interesting, but I was too lazy to click them. What? It's 2010.) I appreciate your opening a dialogue on the subject, but hey, the people to whom this is relevant are not just lawyers, but RSS junkies as well. Both groups of people who thrive on efficiency. Naturally, they're gonna be pissed.
and i just read the website only to realize that the articles are truncated there too! damn!
I will be unsubscribing if this becomes permanent, and will not click through to read any articles during the next 30 days. Ads in the RSS feed are fine.
I don't have a problem with truncated blogs when it's ones where there's only one or two posts every day or two. But with Above the Law there's dozens every day. Clicking on them individually is incredibly obnoxious. I hope you enable full rss-feed again 30 days from now!
boo
What about people who have employers that block the actual site but don't / can't block through a reader?
I unsubscribe truncated feeds. Interesting content but I will check back in 30 days to see if you have changed your mind. More ads are fine but keep the feeds complete.Ciao.
hate it!
I'm not unsubscribing. Yet.But I am far less likely to click through to read your content, because the excerpts are not formatted in a manner I can quickly scan. And there isn't enough content for me to determine if the content you provide is interesting to me.But I'll hang on…at least for the next 30 days…in hopes that you'll reconsider your decision. (I much prefer the option I've seen at 43folders.com where there is a box at the bottom of each post in the RSS feed explaining the source of the content and the copyright, so that, when content is automatically stolen, it is clear to the reader both that the content is stolen and the legitimate source of the content they may have enjoyed.)