This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Michael Cote. Original Post: RSS Feeds for BizJournals Feed Title: Cote's Weblog: Coding, Austin, etc. Feed URL: https://cote.io/feed/ Feed Description: Using Java to get to the ideal state. Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Michael Cote Latest Posts From Cote's Weblog: Coding, Austin, etc.

I just noticed that BizJournals.com has RSS feeds. They're obviously confused about the benefits of providing free info through feeds: you have to login to get an RSS URL. The URL appears to have a Guid, or something else unique, in it so they can track which users are reading the feeds.

While I'm happy to be getting the info -- I can keep up with the Austin business stuff -- they're going to kill their bandwidth with this approach. With something like bloglines, any number of users can read an RSS feed (from 1 to thousands), but the feed just gets downloaded once. With this approach, every one of those users downloads an RSS feed. That's just silly.

If they're concerned about tracking who read what, the solution is simple:

• Provide only summaries in their feed.
• Once someone clicks on to read more for any entry, require them to login before seeing the article.

That's it. If they don't click to read the rest of the article, you couldn't really fairly count them as a reader anyhow...nevermind what how they actually do these metrics.