First, let me clarify, this is not a Digg vs. Reddit debate. It’s just an observation based on how these two services handle their RSS feeds.
In the image below, you see a part of my Netvibes space, with Digg and Reddit RSS feeds being next to each other. Every day, I click multiple times on many items in both these feeds, and I reckon that the tens of thousands of RSS subscribers do the same. But there’s one important difference.
Clicking on an item in Reddit’s fead leads you directly to the site that the story on Reddit is linking to. Clicking on an item in Digg’s feed leads you to Digg.
It doesn’t take a math genius to see that Reddit is losing a lot of pageviews this way. Furthermore, I can’t speak on behalf of other users, but personally I’d like Reddit to lead me to the Reddit story, just like Digg does. I like to read the comments and the description before visiting the actual site. I like to be able to go to mirrors which will inevitably be posted in the comments if the original site crashes.
From a business perspective, Reddit is losing pageviews and pageviews equal money.
From the user perspective, I’d like to know what you, the readers, think? Should Reddit change its RSS feed so it leads to the story on Reddit, or should they leave it as it is? Vote in the poll, and feel free to voice your opinion in the comments.
Here’s a couple of Yahoo Pipes to solve your problem.
Searching for your URL on Reddit:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=WFhlZULd2xGFxrGhzKky6g
Searching for your URL on Reddit or Digg:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=pMb8M77c2xGth___l7okhQ
and finally, a generic page redirect for any Reddit RSS feed:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=WFhlZULd2xGFxrGhzKky6g
I guess most reddit users know that they don’t crash a web server, unlike digg, as I haven’t heard of a “reddit effect” yet.
So perhaps the guys behind the site haven’t bothered to deal much with the RSS feeds, but maybe it’s about time they did. Especially since they’ve started placing ads on the side just recently.
I stopped tuning in to Digg’s feed as soon as they started linking to their own pages instead of the external news stories. Anything that slows down the user and adds useless extra clicks is a bad idea - especially for a news aggregator.
I’m a iGoogle user rather than netvibes but am pretty sure they would have some way of viewing the feed items description(?)
In the reddit feed the description contains a [more] link which leads to the items page on reddit. I tend to use this more than the actual headline link as I find quite often that the comments on reddit can be just as interesting (if not more) than the site its linking to.
@Aaron: you’re right. In Netvibes, I can’t click on the “more” link. So, I guess this is more of a feed usage issue.
Actually, this is exactly why I like Reddit in my RSS feed more. 99% of the time I don’t want to be involved in any part of the Digg process - I’m not part of that community and I don’t want to become part of it. So just giving me the direct link makes me a much happier camper.
or log in to reddit, and turn on the voting toolbar. The entries in reddit’s feed go through a reddit redirect that’ll open the site with the reddit toolbar if you have it enabled.
“Actually, this is exactly why I like Reddit in my RSS feed more. 99% of the time I don’t want to be involved in any part of the Digg process - I’m not part of that community and I don’t want to become part of it. So just giving me the direct link makes me a much happier camper.”
It’s why I don’t have Digg in my RSS feeds.
I’m happy you brought this up, Stan, as it’s a design decision we made that was (as you pointed out) rather atypical. We’ve always tried to build reddit to get in its users’ way as little as possible.
We figured our users would appreciate going directly to the source of the headline they’re clicking on — instead of just going to another part of reddit.
But perhaps we’re wrong. If our users want something changed, they let us know. For the time being, the [more] link that some of the other commenters pointed out was our best idea for a solution.
Your blog entry will no doubt continue to generate some helpful feedback.
@Alexis: thanks for stopping by. Well, if the poll in the article is any indication, about two thirds of users like Reddit the way it is.
It’s a fine observation