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.
I'm really disappointed by this. I'll probably leave it on out of sheer laziness, but I HATE truncated RSS feeds. I often read full stories and forward them on (email) to friends who might be interested but don't regularly follow ATL — I really don't see that happening if the RSS feeds are truncated, because I'm unlikely to click through unless something looks super interesting to me (and not to my friends).
Seeya, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to see if I can live without ATL for 30 days.
Some may like it. I, however, have unsubscribed. Perhaps I'll remember in 30 days to check back… or perhaps something else will have caught my attention and limited reading time. It is all about time, and by forcing me to click through, you're absconding with mine.
Add me to the list of annoyed lawyers. Put ads in, but don't truncate. Not worth the time of clicking through.
Absolutely hate the truncation. It was like a bad dream to wake up and find both ATL and WSJ like this. I won't be unsubscribing but I will read far less content than I did in the past, which makes it even less likely that I will visit the actual website. On the bright side, I guess it just saves me a lot more time during the day since I won't be reading all the ATL posts anymore.
Unsubscribed.
Add me to the list of the unsubscribing. At my job, RSS feed is far less objectionable and I am often to busy to surf the web so I imagine I will read less — your loss. (For the record, would not mind if you included "truncated ads" into the RSS feed.
I use a mobile rss reader. I don't click through from truncated posts because your website is not mobile-browser friendly. Feel free to embed ads in the feed. I'll check back in a month.
Hate hate hate the truncation. I'm inclined to unbsubscribe to most feeds that do this. For those I wish to keep, I'll click thru to an occasional story but my views will plummet.
This blows — change it back.
I probably will not be reading Above the Law for the next 29 days — or at least I will read much less of it. Here are two reasons why I cannot just click thru.1 – I do not want to log traffic to ATL from firm computers because I am paranoid that one day they will try to hunt down a "tipster" and will come talk to everyone who frequents the site. Valid concern? I don't know. Commonly held concern? I think so.2 – So I primarily look at the site on my iPhone, which is insanely slow and cumbersome — especially since you switched the comments to Disqus. Not to mention that during the commute I can load all the available stories on my RSS reader and read them on the train underground, while I cannot click-thru to anything during most of the commute. Reading through the RSS feed is just far more efficient. Please consider other ways to deal with scrapers. Feel free to insert additional ads into the feed, and I will make an effort to click on them in the future.
Why can't you just put the ads inside the RSS feed itself! Isn't that a fair compromise? Other sites do this.
Good heavens, you write for LAWYERS. Do you know what a bunch of grudge-bearing trolls we are? We walk loudly, carry cudgels, and don't care who gets hurt when we're angry. Stop the madness of truncation and save your brand. Your readers passionate loyalty to the professions main trade rag will quickly turn to hate when you start demanding more of their precious free time. And as you eloquently remind us daily, this is NOT the market to have your ship go under.
Truncation essentially defeats the purpose of RSS. I'm a full-time web developer, and part-time law student – the reason I use RSS is to get all the information in one spot. If I have to click on every story or link to the get the info, I would just go to your site and hop around from link-to-link. Count me out for the next 30 days – and permanently if ATL doesn't switch back (which is a shame because I've been a fan of the site for some time).
Just wanted to add my voice to those who are unsubscribing. No bitterness, no whining — I understand what you're trying to do, but there's a reason I use an RSS reader rather than opening a bunch of bookmarks. This does seem like an old-fashioned and short-sighted solution to what I'm sure is a very real problem. Best of luck to you.
I am also unsubscribing due to the truncation of the RSS feed. It is a waste of my time to open a new window to read each individual blog post. I really like Above the Law, but since I do most of my reading on RSS and using my iPad, the truncated version just won't work for me. Plenty of blogs put ads in the feeds or have a couple of posts that are just ads. I am fine with that. So I will unsubscribe for 30 days and then if the full posts are back I will resubscribe, if not, then I am, unfortunately, out. Take a look at how people will be using the internet and consuming content in 5 years and then ask yourself how many of those people will bother going to a website to get content and information. Keep yourself on the front end of the curve – if you try to force people to consume your content the way YOU envision, instead of the way that they want to, then you will only alientate your community. Instead, take the convenient model that people prefer and figure out a way to monetize that. Blogs and other websites that provide free content live and die by the loyalty of their communities. Alienating that community is short-sighted and the first step toward being that website that people sort of remember from 10 years ago – as in "Hey, remember pets.com? Yeah, wasn't there a sock puppet or something?"
Sorry, but I'm not clicking on any link to ATL until RSS feed is restored. If boycotts are in style against Arizona, why not hit ATL too. I do check at work, but find it's a better option to catch the feed before riding the subway underground for 45 minutes.
Truncation is a half-assed solution to your problem. At the least, you should have more summary content and/or advertisements embedded in your post. Readers can then determine whether or not a post is worth clicking through—assuming I'm not precluded from mobile viewing given your current implementation.Additionally, I like to forward articles via Google Reader to those who would not ordinarily read your content. As a result of your changes, you may be eliminating a potential channel for new readership.I'll circle back to resubscribe in 30 days.
I'll join the chorus of truncating being really annoying. I follow ATL on Google reader on my phone while at work – I'm not about to visit from my firm computer.I wouldn't mind so much if the website itself was mobile-friendly – an additional click is mildly annoying at worse. But the full webpage takes a long time to load and is difficult to navigate on my phone.I'd have no objection to more ads in the RSS feed – much preferable to truncating.Oh, and to echo someone else, the truncating is done poorly – the portion that goes out should be carefully selected for each post or a separate summary written. Thanks for listening!
I'll join the chorus of truncating being really annoying. I follow ATL on Google reader on my phone while at work – I'm not about to visit from my firm computer.I wouldn't mind so much if the website itself was mobile-friendly – an additional click is mildly annoying at worse. But the full webpage takes a long time to load and is difficult to navigate on my phone.I'd have no objection to more ads in the RSS feed – much preferable to truncating.Oh, and to echo someone else, the truncating is done poorly – the portion that goes out should be carefully selected for each post or a separate summary written. Thanks for listening!
Amen. Put adds in the feed. So much more convenient than visiting the site. I'll be suspending visits to ATL for a month.
Tax lawyer. Out.
Also unsubscribing. Hopefully back in a month.
i hate it. i read the site less often now because it's harder to access. please stop
The new feed is annoying. Often when sites make this change they grandfather people in with their own full feed.
unsubscribing from abovethelaw feed. not only did you truncate but you cluttered the little content that was provided in the feed with GIANT FONT facebook and twitter whoring. consider your "experiment" an abject failure.
Ads in the posts are fine, I never click on the links to the full post. Please stop truncating.
Know what? I've discovered I *can* live without ATL. Thanks guys!
Know what? I've discovered I *can* live without ATL. Thanks guys!