Deep Jive Interests

There are many, actual, “eternal debates” amongst bloggers.  One of them is the whole full vs. partial feeds debate, which has reared its ugly, ugly head again, with respect to the Freakonomics blog (you know, the really popular one, based on the New York Times bestselling book — but more on the latter in a moment) as it is moving to the New York Times.  Long time fans of the blog have been clamoring that the move from full to partial feeds “teh suck”, to put it mildly.

I’ve never quite understood how militant people can feel about their need for feeds, and how this sometimes come out, again, to put it mildly, as a little entitled.  GRrrrrah! I deserve full feeds! GRrrrra! I will unsubscribe if I don’t get them and never come back! GRrrraaa — <cough, cough>  RRrraa!  Partial feeds only serves to feed The Man!  Partial feeds are antithetical to the freedom of the interwebs! GRrrrrah! I don’t care that blogging is a business, I still want to read your content the way I want!

Meh.  :)

While the issue is a little more nuanced than I’m making it out to be — namely, the issue of alienating a small but vocal part of their core audience versus growing it through the New York Times (do you know which side I fall onto?) — and that some respected bloggers clearly fall on one side of the full side of the partial feed debate … at the end of the day, there’s probably a way to assauge everyone’s feelings by offering both kinds of feeds for the time being.  Sure, it might not be the NYTimes “policy”, but on the other hand, they don’t acquire a blog like Freakonomics every day either.