Unfortunately, I have to unsubscribe to the Dilbert Blog

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/thisisgoingtobebig/~3/219974611/unfortunately-i.html

A while back, Scott Adams wrote how blogging wasn't really boosting his bottom line the way he thought it would, so he decided to make some changes.  He has decided not only to blog less, but also to go to partial RSS feeds. 

His reasoning is that, unless you were coming to the site, he couldn't monetize you as well.  It wasn't clear that he had ever heard of Feedburner ads for RSS.

So, he made the calculation that he could force those reading his RSS feed to come to the site to read full feeds.  In my case, he can't, because I read a lot of my RSS feeds offline, when I'm on the subway reading through my phone, though Newsgator Mobile.  When I like a post, I clip it, and often send it to others or tag it in del.icio.us for later, meaning the link winds up on my blog and I send some traffic his way.

Either way, as an RSS reader, I'm still net positive on total pageviews.  Moving me to partial feeds doesn't make me add pageviews, it makes me completely disappear.  This is the case for a lot of RSS readers...  going to partial feeds will make your RSS audience dry up, engage less, and certainly never pass the site to others.

I kept the feed in my reader hoping it would change back, but he seems pretty set in his ways, so I'm unsubscribing.  I read RSS feeds and if you're not going to publish a full feed, then I'm not going to read you.  It's a shame, b/c the Dilbert Blog was one of my favorites.

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