# An Open Letter to Bob Frankston

DevFeed: [An Open Letter to Bob Frankston](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/an-open-letter-to-bob-frankston-28301.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://fuzzyblog.io/blog/rss/2020/01/07/an-open-letter-to-bob-frankston.html>)

Author: Fuzzygroup

Published: 2020-01-07T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Scott Johnson](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/scott-johnson.md>)

Topics: [RSS Feed](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rss-feed.md>), [RSS](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rss.md>)

Tags: [blogging](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blogging.md>), [rss](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rss.md>)

## AI overview

An open letter urges Bob Frankston to configure his blogging tool to publish full-content RSS feeds instead of summaries. The author argues that requiring readers to click through from aggregators can cause them to miss the full post and notes that full-content feeds are no harder to produce.

## Source excerpt

(Photo Credit - Lisa Meece; Thank You) Hi Bob, I strongly doubt you remember but I met you years ago as part of the Boston Blogging group that Dave Winer used to organize. About the same time I also met Dan Bricklin. I wanted to make a suggestion to you. I've been subscribed to you in my aggregator for a long time but due to the design of aggregators, it isn't clear if a post in the aggregator is full content or summary. Here's all I saw of your current (wonderful) CES post: CES is a time to see new products and services. Alas, my expectations might be too high. And here is how this appears in an aggregator: I thought this was just a lament but I happened to click through and lo and below, a wonderful bit of writing. So my suggestion to you is to change your blogging tool to output the full content of each post you write. I'm pretty certain you wrote your own blogging tool and, thus, I know this is possible; you obviously have the skills (and if that isn't the greatest understatement I've made blogging, I don't know what is). My suspicion is that for yourself it is more important that you get your ideas out into the universe than that you drive people to your site. This is the single best reason for a full content feed. Every time you have to rely on someone clicking thru from their aggregator to your site, there is a solid chance (1 in 2; 1 in 3; 1 in 5; 1 in 10 ???) that they just won't). Often times they don't ever know that there is more content out there; I certainly didn't and I've been in the RSS world now for almost 20 years and I have pretty solid credentials in the RSS world - I was the creator of the Feedster RSS and Blog search engine. Note: My own blog and my recipes are all done with full content feeds so I'm not askign you to do anything that I'm not doing. Also full content feeds aren't really any harder than a summary feed - just put out the full content. Feel free to use my feed as an example. Even better - use Dave's. Btw I loved this point: "I mo