In the 40 months I’ve written this blog, I’ve developed a few strong opinions about How Things Should Be Done. Will you indulge me for a moment why I share some of them? You will? Oh thank you.
You mustn’t feel compelled to follow my suggestions. Please argue or ignore them as you see fit.
After ages of reading blogs through my blog roll only and adding blogs by hand (and very reluctantly), I finally switched over to Google Reader. This makes writing the Tuesday Fleshbot Sex Blog Roundup ever so much easier for me.
At least, it’s easier for me if you do one very small, very simple thing. May I beg you to publish a full feed? Please don’t tease me with an abbreviated feed or worse, just the title of your post.
“But I want people to click over and read on the blog itself,” you might be thinking, and I thought the same too for a long time. But the fact of the matter is that many people won’t click over. Blame it on time constraints, blame it on laziness, blame it on the momentum one acquires when paging through the dozens if not hundreds of items that land in one’s feed reader daily.
It doesn’t really matter why people won’t leave the comfort of their reader. A sizable portion won’t, and that leaves you with a decision to make in regard to potential readers who like you well enough to add you to their feeds: If they’ve already made the decision not to click over, would you prefer that they read your whole post or just a fraction of it? If your only concern is how many hits your blog gets, then by all means continue to publish only a partial feed. But if your concern is having people read your words, for fuck’s sake publish the whole thing.
You may call me lazy if you’d like, but there aren’t many blogs which publish partial feeds that I’ll click over to read. In fact I can think of only one. I’m even less inclined to do so if I’m in a time crunch (and I’m always in a time crunch) while writing the Roundup. In hoping to gain a few more hits you greatly reduce the chance of being included in a Roundup that I write — which would usher in the pitter-pat of hundreds if not thousands of little Fleshbottian feet. Don’t believe me that full feeds are a good thing? Read here for some more compelling reasons to publish a full feed.
Thank you for letting me get that out. I feel ever so much better now, so I’ll tackle my second lil’ issue: Twitter. Oh how much I love Twitter. I love the discipline required to express thoughts in 140 characters, and the immediacy of information passage, and the fun. But one thing I hate about Twitter is the idea that people should by default follow whomever is following them.
I enjoy reciprocity as much as the next person when it comes to hand jobs, blow jobs and assfuckery, but on Twitter reciprocity is impractical at best and coercive at worst.
I cringe when someone snarks at me about not following them. As much as I wish I could follow all 576 people who currently follow me, how would I then get anything done? If each of them updated five times a day and I could read Tweets at a rate of 20 per minute, it would take nearly two and a half hours to get through them all.
Please don’t be offended then if I don’t follow you back or even unfollow you. Honestly, it has way less to do with you than it does my own personal time constraints. Accept my most sincere apologies for not being able to multi-task even more so than I already do. And if you’re looking for more sexy, sex-writing, sex-positive folks on Twitter, Violet Blue has compiled a list of them here.
Here concludes my small rant on How Things Should Be Done. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d make a suggestion for me. Who should be added to my blogroll? I need old blogs and new which feature at least some writing about sexuality. Please advise in the comments below.
no suggestions on blog roll, being I don’t get to blog or read blogs very often… i wanna be #577 to follow you, and don’t have expectations of you following me back :)
Just don’t block me from following you on Twitter and I shall continue to be a happy gal!
I like your list of how things should be done. Since I started using google reader teasers just piss me off.
I would suggest myself but I’m very very random with the sex and whatnot. And on another look, I think you’ve got the awesomeness covered.
Brah-voh. I work in the RSS industry. I *hate* partial feeds, and so do readers.
Point taken, dear, and I’ve just enabled a full feed on my blog. I wouldn’t suggest it for your blogroll, though; it doesn’t fulfil the other criteria. Being a new tweeter, I shall heed your timely tips on Twitter etiquette. Ta. :-)
Amen!
There are fortunately only a few blogs on my reader that do not provide a full feed. I only click through once in a great while, if something in the partial feed really catches my attention. I would estimate that I never read 3 out of 4 posts, which is a shame, but it’s just too annoying!
As for Twitter, I recently got into a discussion over such things with a couple of other Tweeters. I most certainly cannot follow more than 80-100 people at a time. Just like I don’t *ask* people to read my blog, I don’t *ask* them to follow me on Twitter. It’s their choice to do so, and if I don’t follow them back, it’s their choice to unfollow me. If you’re only adding people to attempt to get them to follow you back, I probably don’t want to follow you anyway.
If Twitter is about social connections and interaction, I feel that the quality of those interactions decreases if you follow so many people that you cannot keep up with active discussions, or contribute in any meaningful way.
If you’re using it for advertising yourself/blog/store, all the power to you. I respect everyones right to use Twitter as they see fit, just don’t whine when nobody wants to add your feed.
Ok, I’ll stop here before I *really* get ranting, LOL.
Shasta
DebauchedDiva had pointed me to that article she saw you Tweet about, as I only have a partial feed, for the reasons you listed.
I can’t pinpoint why, but I don’t feel comfortable having my photos that are in the post included on the feed. One logical reason would be that including the risque photos in the readers makes it difficult for those who are using a feedreader at work or in another restricted situation.
I’ll either figure out a way to tweek that about my feed, or just say fuck it and make it full, as that article does raise good points.
Once that Twitter list came out by Violet Blue, a whole bunch of my fellow blogger girls wanted to be included in it next year. Me? No. My updates are protected, and I’m picky about who I let follow me. To me it’s not a tool for networking, it’s a tool for a unique method of group communication/chat.
FWIW, I read your blog via email. And almost always click on it to actually come to your blog. How else would I comment?
I prefer full feeds in Google Reader, but I *do* often click through to the site. Especially sites that probably have additional interesting content in the comments, even if I’m not planning on commenting.
I don’t do Twitter — my time’s taken up enough with Facebook — so, I can’t comment on that part, but it seems reasonable that you couldn’t keep up with everyone who keeps up with you.
Of course, I’m going to suggest my blog… but I admit that it’s not all that consistent and it’s more entertaining, IMO, on AFF than it is at the URL I have listed here for the “real world.” lol.
Oh, one more thing: Damn you for pointing out your blogroll which I hadn’t really noticed until now. Now I have a lot of reading to do!
It’s like you’re reading my mind. As part of my resolution to get organized and more efficient, I finally set up my own google reader and I’m ever so happy. Except for those damn teasers! On the other hand, if a blog is insightful and prompts me to comment, here you see me clicking through to comment.
I also totally agree with the twitter issue. I’ve stopped following friends because they insist on having stupid conversations with each other. If you want people to follow you- be interesting enough to follow!
Finally, I get all my sex-blog suggestions from your roll, so I have none of my own. :)
Lilly-
I’m not familiar with how it’s done, but I know that some gossip blogs I read don’t include pictures in their feeds, but still have the whole text post. So there may be a solution out there for you. :)
Do you read Gram at Gramponante.com? It’s not exactly a sex blog – it’s more about porn, but he does include sex news from time to time – but his is without a doubt the best and funniest blog I read every day. You probably know his work from Fleshbot.
I so wish that the Google Reader allowed comments to be made there! I have been using Reader for ages and it is so much easier, not to mention work friendly. Even though sometimes the pictures are there, it is a bit safer than having a list of the not always politically correct blog names showing up on my history! I hardly ever click through to comment and have unsubscribed to just about all blogs that don’t give a full feed.
Thanks for your roll, though, and for keeping us all in reading material!
Partial Feeds are pointless really so with you on that one.
As for Twitter, still haven’t got the point really?
I neither feel compelled to follow anyone, nor do I expect them to follow me.
That being said, I do follow you of course…
AAG, I’m flattered that you make an exception for ErosBlog. If I used a feed reader, I’m not sure *I’d* be so charitable, to be honest.
I really wish I could offer full feeds, but when I tried it, I found it to be search engine suicide.
The problem is scraper splogs (spam blogs) that scrape RSS feeds from popular sites and republish the content, automatically, in full, on a dozen or a hundred or a thousand autogenerated sites.
Google then sees that my blog content is no longer unique, but — from where Google sits — just one of a thousand (or ten thousand, these things replicate like viruses) sites with “identical” content.
Result: ErosBlog vanishes from the search engine results. Remember when ErosBlog was the #1 result for “sex blog”? I’ve finally crawled back to the bottom of the first page after a couple of years in the wilderness, but it was a painful and costly experience.
My sense is that the spam blogs / duplicate content / search engine issue loses me more visitors than the partial feeds do. But of course, I can’t quantify or prove that.
I’m open to suggestions, I hate partial feeds as much as everybody else.
I knew you had a good reason for not publishing a full feed. I’m going to look into the information below after I’ve had a bit more sleep:
http://www.jtpratt.com/wordpress-hack-6-protecting-content-from-scrapers-and-splogs/
http://www.untwistedvortex.com/2008/03/26/splog-wars-ii-the-scrapers-dont-get-a-chance-to-strike-back/
http://www.maxpower.ca/wordpress-plugin-digital-fingerprint-detecting-content-theft/2006/09/25/
http://www.blogherald.com/2007/11/12/protecting-your-content-from-the-spinning-spammers/
Thanks, Bacchus. –aag
ok. will do.
I never automatically follow/add/friend anyone on any service. I have noticed people on Twitter are extremely pushy, too.
Well said about the Reader thing. It’s annoying to have to open a new tab to see whether the post gets more interesting than its opening. Reader should allow the reader to toggle partial feeds on and off.
Twitter scares me. It’s the ultimate problem for someone with ADD. I have a hard time concentrating on a 69 :)~
Richard Brian penn
erm… mine??! ;-)
(cheeky i know…)
t.
It’s not about reeling in hits. I like the stats information. And I like my quiet little corner. (Relatively: 120+ hits per day, which is a lot as far as I’m concerned, and certainly fine by me). If people want to read what I write, they will, regardless of what gets published in a feed (and it’ll never be more than that first paragraph).
*shrug* Works for me.
Seconding the splog problem as why I don’t publish full feeds, and will not ever again so long as content-scraping remains possible. It’s not a matter of “teasing” anyone – and if anyone thinks their blog is too small to be scraped, think again. The one I torched post-divorce had an average daily readership of about 10 (It was meant for friends, and that’s pretty much who read it.), but after using a plug-in designed to sniff out content theft, I found my entire 4 years’ work on three splogs. It was seriously creepy in a way that’s hard to describe.
If preventing that costs me readers, I regret it a little, but I feel like anyone not interested enough in what I write to click once to read it, isn’t really interested at all.
Mine. I’ve been an avid reader for about a year now and my blog mostly focuses on individual sexuality and individual sex practices (ie. wanking it). Plus I wrote that awesome story for your contest (that I lost, but whatever). I know I haven’t been around much lately, but that’s because I moved 6 time zones forward and am having a rough time acclimating.
Three cheers, because I also hate the partial feeds. I do click through, but only if I’m sitting down and determined to catch up on ALL my feeds. On an everyday basis, the partial feeds are the last ones I’m likely to read.
The splog issue seems like a tricky one, but I do hope that people can at least give a partial feed rather than a headline or one-liner. If that’s enough of a tease, I’m much more likely to click through than if it’s just a headline.
As for blogs, me please? I’m a stripper and sex nerd, and most of what I write about is sex, porn, and sex work, along with some gender stuff and random other things that cross my mind. I’d love to be in your feed. (And yes, I have full posts enabled for RSS.)
You’re already in there! :) –aag
I totally agree on the feeder topic… in fact, I’m checking mine now to be sure it’s set on the settings I prefer. I think it’s common courtesy, golden rule, Internet etiquette.
I read your blog and, through fleshbot and twitter, have discovered many other sex-positive blogs. My favorites are Easily Aroused for his stunning writing, AAG (you!) and Violet Blue for your mix of personal experiences and sex-positiveness/cool stuff, and badbadgirlx for her touching personal writing. I also have a blog I’ve been trying to get off the ground… a work in progress. chasingthemoonlight.blogspot.com
Thanks for tips
I don’t Twitter
I don’t facebook (I have a whole page on why)
I’m on Wordpress …
does that make me an outcast?
Not in the least. Got you in my reader now, thank you!