Over at Problogger, the author of Lifehacker and a VP from Feedburner were posed the question “Full feeds or partial feeds“. As a heavy blog reader, I come down squarely on the side of full feeds. This is primarily due to my blog consumption model. I read almost all of my feeds on my mobile device (HTC 8525) while commuting on the train each day. Therefore, I do not have the luxury of a large screen to view web-based posts and I don’t have a consistent and fast Internet connection. If I read an article (or a partial) and want to follow up when I get to the office, then I use the handy “Send Link via Email” function of NewsBreak to email myself.

Giving me a partial feed makes it very, very unlikely that I will ever read your full article. right now, I am subscribing to four partial feeds from CNN, A List Apart, Technology Review and Lifehacker. Now, Lifehacker’s full feed offers very short posts since their model is that of a blog aggregator, so I don’t feel that I miss much with the partials. I almost never read a full post from the other three sites since I am required to have my interest piqued after just one or two sentences. Give me an advertisement in the feed, I don’t really care (A List Apart advertises in their partial feed…. bad!), I just want the full feed.