I used to check my RSS subscriber numbers daily and I used to sweat over those numbers. Did my last blog post work and increase my blog subscribers? What about that guest blog post I had on a popular blog, or what about when I hit the front page of Delicious?
How did it all affect my blog readership? Am I doing it well and is my blog readership growing? I was basically looking for all these answers in my blog RSS readership numbers.
I don’t do this anymore. Now, days can go by between my logins to FeedBurner. It is not that I don’t care about the progress of my blog, it is just that I find RSS subscribers number less relevant to the growth of a blog these days.
FriendFeed adding their subscribers to FeedBurner
Some weeks ago FriendFeed decided to add subscribers you have on their service to FeedBurner, so now all your FriendFeed subscribers are added on top of your RSS subscribers, which resulted in some very inflated numbers. I went from some 1500+ RSS subscribers to some 3000+ that same day.
It just shows how weak that metric was in the first place when it is so easy to add services to it. Just imagine if Twitter or some other application does the same thing.
It looks good to have these larger blog subscriber numbers, but it is fake as your Twitter followers or your FriendFeed friends are not subscribed to your blog the same way as someone who did it via a newsreader is.
Popularity of Google Reader
I used to read my feeds via a desktop based client, but some months ago I switched to Google Reader. It is so much easier and faster compared to desktop RSS newsreaders, and it is in a cloud in a browser wherever I go without having to download and install the software.
Google Reader has recently moved more into the social media territory. You can now “like” RSS articles and you can “share” them with your friends. So if I share an article in my Google Reader it will also show up in yours when you do your reading. See the blogging articles I shared recently.
I subscribe to several people via Google Reader and it is a very good experience. Someone like Louis Gray is very well connected and shares tons of interesting articles daily.
And this doesn’t only go for people. If you subscribe to RSS feeds of sites like Digg.com, Delicious.com or TweetMeme.com, you do get the most popular articles around the web.
All these subscriptions make me very well connected and informed, even though I am not subscribed to all the blogs that I end up reading regularly and I do not show in their RSS subscriber numbers.
Conclusion
So on one hand we have the inflated RSS subscriber numbers because of tools like FriendFeed, and on the other hand we have a completely new way of reading RSS feeds via social media and friend shares. All in all, there needs to be a better way of tracking the RSS readership than the current one. Maybe by page view as it is done with blog posts? I hope someone is working on a solution.
The alternative would be to go back to showing partial RSS feed and force people to click over to your blog to view the full article. Or let visitors subscribe to the email newsletter for the full articles. Doing this you would be able to get a more correct number of the readers of your content.
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Ouch, you got some spam ahead of me…
I don't look at my RSS stats. They are all over the place.
Get ready for the Google Wave… Google reader is fast becoming my favorite app from G. It used to be that when I want to share something with someone (gmail contact) I would have to send an email. Now, I just click share.
I think the big G loves me, they keep building the tools I want..
I don't think the answer is to change the way you offer feed services to your readers. In effect you're saying, “I'm going to give you weaker service because my stats are so important and you're screwing them up.”
The answer would be a more accurate tracking of feeds. There must be analytic software we can install in our feeds and see how many views it gets, anywhere it is viewed. If we're leaving that up to Feedburner we're not taking responsibility for getting the accurate stats we desire.
I've stopped looking at the whole numbers and are now concentrating on how many followers I've got via mail. It gives me more to work with.
Including FriendFeed counts in Feedburner stats was a bad move by Google in my opinion. It really deluted the value of the number and encourages bloggers with low counts to go out and promote the FF account in an attempt to make their blog look like it has high numbers of subscribers.
I can semi see where they are coming from with Aweber counts being included, but that is a more targeted audience that performed a call to action on that particular site. I have several blogs and now every time I just start one…I already have hundreds of “subscribers”…misleading for new visitors.
What's next? Adding in Twitter follower counts?
I concentrate on my email subscribers, content, and visitors. It was pretty cool to see my RSS subscriber count jump one day. I thought it was wrong until I searched about why. Greg
I haven't looked at my server log in months- but's it's in the thousands over hundreds over 6 months. RSS numbers on the rise, Twitter followers etc. Blogs are working- I don't care too much about the metrics anymore- I am not selling widgets or Google ads.- what I am getting are DM's from targeted contacts- it's all good!
I used to be obsessed the RSS numbers too but I've just given up on since 99% of people I talk to have no idea what it is. I'd rather have email subscribers over RSS readers any day. But, I really like your idea about subscribeing to the RSS feeds of Digg, Reddit or Delicious <= that's a great idea that I'll play around with tonight.
I feel the same way about Google… they keep delivering great tools and Google Wave promises to be another one I will use…
True. Some people do prefer to get their news via RSS so probably not the best option to restrict it, but maybe best to focus on email more than on RSS when promoting subscription methods. But of course if tracking could be changed, it would be perfect.
It was actually FriendFeed that decided to add their stats to FeedBurner. Not sure how it is done exactly but it seems to be fairly simple and Google doesn't seem to mind. So yeah, it seems that other platforms like Twitter could do the same thing…
I thought that was wierd when they made that switch. I hadn't heard about it beforehand. I've never given too much thought to the true value of rss subscriptions. To me, it means that people have found my content valuable enough to subscribe. So if I have one rss subscriber, I think that totally rocks, but am I going to obssess over how to get that number as high as possible? Why should I?
I used this tool, but not receive lot subscriber, and your post help me again view, tks!
I was trying to figure out what happened at my blog when my RSS subscribers jumped from 40 to 740 in just one day. I noticed the same thing, friendfeed.
How do those numbers actually work? How can I see all the people who are subscribed to me in friendfeed?
As for Google Reader, it's my primary source of information. I use it every morning for an hour to keep up with what's going on. As a matter of fact, I got this article through my reader and then decided to visit so I could comment.
One thing that I have noticed in Google Reader is that some people are now only offering part of their content, forcing you to go to their site to get the rest of the story. I'm of the opinion that this is ridiculous. Why shouldn't I be able to read the whole story in my reader??? Is it just because they want the visits to their site?
If the content is strong enough I will hop out of my reader to comment, but I don't like being forced to visit, it defeats the purpose of the reader…why bother having the RSS feed then? What's your take on this?
I'm one of those people who's sticking with the desktop based client instead, not necessarily because I don't like Google Reader, but because I like the separation in not having to open my browser to have to read stuff. I'm probably going against the current, but then I've never been all that good at doing what everyone else is doing anyway.
As for RSS subscribers, I guess when one gets to at least 1,500 that they can afford not to look at how many people are following them. I'm still reaching to get that first 100 number, so I added the subscriber icon to my blog so I don't have to go looking it up; it's just always there. I'm not sure it does any good or not, but it keeps me from going to Feedburner every couple of hours just to see where I stand.
Everyone who is your friend at Friendfeed counts so if you have 1000 friends there it is 1000 subscribers on Feedburner. Very fake number for rss subscribers as they are not actually subscribing to it.
I think the reason is page views. Some bloggers sell ad space and in that case page views are monumental so they try to force everyone to read the article directly on their blog.
Agree, I too consider that Friendfeed subscribers are not genuine feed readers.
To some extent subscriber to RSS feed is a worthless metric. People who subscribe to RSS feeds subscribe to lot information and they have too much information and no time to read.
I feel a good metric of the site is whether the readers have drilled down the site and read more on the website.
Cheers,
Santosh Puthran