MovableBlog: Blogs Without RSS = Less Readers?

April 6, 2003

I have come to the viewpoint that if you don't have an RSS feed, you shouldn't have a blog. Maybe thats harsh and there is a whole another model but I can't spend the time to surf a 150 sites a day. If its not on an RSS feed, I won't see your site or read it, and you know what? Most other people won't see it or read it either.

I disagree with that sentiment, which appears here. Odds are that the people who don't read Talking Points Memo have reasons other than the lack of RSS feed for not reading it, despite it being an excellent weblog. The above sentiment is echoed in this post elsewhere: "But if anyone wants to blog without an RSS feed... more power to them - just don't expect too many readers." Again, Talking Points Memo disproves that: it has quite a few readers despite not having an RSS feed (to my knowledge). Maybe if they qualified it with "if anyone is considering starting blogging, but without an RSS feed", then maybe I might be inclined to agree with their sentiments.

From that last-linked post: "And feeds that don't contain the entire post content aren't much better in my view". Fair enough. But at least they give us weblog-readers with news aggregators the ability to tell if a site has been updated or not, saving us from having to visit the site in question hour after hour (instead, we press Refresh on our aggregator hour after hour).

RSS is changing the way weblogs are published and read, but just because a site doesn't have an RSS feed, doesn't mean it isn't worth reading.

Posted by Richard at 8:04