I had seen my blog’s subscription base go up after switching to full RSS feeds and though full feeds make it easy for spam sites to republish you content, this actually will help you in the long run.
Recently Lifehacker and other Gawker media websites switched to partial feeds (they still provide full feeds but the default is now the truncated version). The official reason for making this switch was:
Gawker Media is an ad-supported company. RSS ads have never realized their potential. At the same time we sell plenty of ads on our website. So, yes, it is in our interest for people to click through if enticed by an excerpt.
Felix Salmon of Reuters however says that Nick Denton’s decision to truncate his RSS feeds may not be “a commercial decision” at all:
That move was largely an attempt to move Gawker away from being a big blog and towards competing directly with the likes of nytimes.com for serious online traffic. And while it’s pretty standard for blogs of all sizes to have full RSS feeds, it’s also very uncommon for big news sites to have full RSS feeds.
There might be a reason for that fact, although if there is I don’t really understand it. But I do see this move as a signal that Denton is exiting the blogosphere and that he has his sights set on higher ambitions.