If you hide it, they will come

So, a buddy, Jon, and I have been discussing differing perspectives of the business guy and the IT guy. Basically, in my biz guy career, I've been responsible for driving more profit through marketing and product innovation. Basically, I decide what to do, then others (artists, coders, print shops, etc.) actually create the stuff. The buddy is more of the IT guy, someone who can do actual coding, even more than changing font color, which I learned from old eBay (back in the day, eBay made you use html code for product listings)...

Anyways, he taught me how to use RSS feeds, which I'd been curious about but never used. I noticed that some pages allow you to see the full story, while other only give a teaser text. The New York Times only gives you the teaser text.

As the "biz guy", I thought this was smart because they would be driving users to their site, which is how they make money from ads. Jon, the "IT guy", is very pissy about teaser text, and says he thinks that actually reduces click-thrus, because it will frustrate the users of the RSS feeds to the point to where they won't use that sites feeds. So, he thinks they get more click-thrus using full text than teaser text... I think that's insane. (You can go to his blog if you want his version of the story, or read his complaints about everything).


As a marketing guy, I'm guessing this was pretty easy for NYT to test. Basically, they'd have half their subscribers getting full feed and half getting teaser. Whoever ended up generating more revenue ended up becoming the standard (pretty basic stuff). Jon believes NYT is just clueless and didn't bother. I hope he's wrong, but you never know.

I'd be curious to hear other opinions on this. Do you care if your RSS is full or teaser text? Would you ever click on an advertisement anyways? And if you do comment, please identify yourself as either the "biz guy" or "IT guy". If you can code in any language other than HTML, you are automatically the IT guy.