RSS Emphasizes Deleted Sections

| 2 Comments

Here's a dilemma for the bloggers: Let's say you post something that could use a little, um, refinement. After reading your post, you realize you should soften the language or take out a detail that's a bit too juicy. Your blog platform lets you edit published posts, so no problem, right? Well, no. Making changes actually highlights the text you want to hide, at least for some readers.

Highlight changes
The problem is, some RSS readers have an option to highlight changes in posts. Once the reader sees a post, it tracks changes to that post as long as it's in the feed. In my reader, for example, additions are shown in green text—so far, so good. But deleted text is shown in red—not so good for hiding. Deleted text is also strikethrough lined out, but it's readable. Every time a post is edited, the reader shows it to me again. It's frequently annoying but occasionally revealing.

So, the act of changing the post calls attention to the parts you needed to change, at least for subscribers who have that option turned on. And that red text draws attention to what may be the best parts of a post.

It can be very interesting to see what people go back and change.


2 Comments

Or deleted posts...W+K Portland had a post in their feed about winning back the Nike Running business that was quickly deleted from their site, but lives on in RSS.

I accidentally posted a draft a while back. Nothing particularly embarrassing, but it wasn't close to ready. Deleting it from the blog was easy; getting it off the site that syndicates some of my posts (Social Media Today) took about a day.

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About Nathan Gilliatt

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