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Comment by entuno | Hacker News Reader

Where I have RSS feeds from news sites, I usually skim down the list of titles, read an article (in my feed) if it's interesting, and then move on. I never visit their website, I don't see their adverts, their tracking scripts can't run, and I don't see or interact with their comments.

Which is great for me as the end user - but makes it much harder for them to monetise.

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Le Monde will tell you that you only got 70% or so of the article in your feed and you need to go to the site to get the full article. Why don't more feeds do that? Actually, I am unsure if this is the feed itself or the fact that my RSS reader scrapes the sites too.

Some sites even have different RSS links for subscribers only that give a full feed.

> makes it much harder for them to monetise.

On the other hand, RSS definitely provides extra opportunities to monitise. Imagine your business provides a customisable "offers" feed so you can tell interested parties when a sale occurs, etc. Businesses should be falling over themselves to get that kind of engagement.

That just sounds like a mailing list, but without the ability to easily identify and track the individuals you're sending to.

So... a win-win? RSS also avoids all the problems associated with spam.

Not everyone is out to monetise (e.g public sector). And even if you are after monetisation, sending out a teaser snippet makes sense. The user can decide if they want to visit the site to read more, subscribe etc.

Nobody's forcing them to put the full text into the feed, for me the main benefit is not having to check the site manually.

As the consumer, that's a big benefit, and the main reason I use RSS.

But for the company running the website, the fact that you're no longer browsing to their site, being served adverts and tracking code, and seeing what's on their homepage is not a benefit

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