RSS: Summary or Full Content?

Up until now I've been syndicating my posts in the form of full content. While I think this is the ideal method for sharing content, specifically blog content that is periodic, it ultimately suffers from a number of different "security" issues. That said, for the time being I'll be sticking with summaries over full content in my feeds.

In the past I never really saw alot of trouble coming from sharing full content in my RSS feeds. Recently, thought, I've been seeing more and more links coming in from automated blogs. Mostly based on my WordPress posts, these automated blogs collect information from feeds and re-post them for a variety of different reasons.

I'm not referring to your standard aggregators like BlogLines. Bloglines, MyYahoo, and even Gooogle reader are pretty much what RSS was created for. Auto-Blogs collect your feeds content for a much more fiendish purpose - topublish it mostly under their own title. Occasionally they provide links back, but only after completely posting your content on their own site.

If you're stopping here looking for blogging related tips I recommend securing your content in a similar fashion. Not only will this drive more readers to your site, rather than just reading your feed, it will also cut down on the chances of your content being "borrowed." You can also check out a previous post on protecting content.