That is some good data. So the question is, how do we "B-List Bloggers" manage to make that "B" stand for "Bundled"? I wouldn't mind an additional 80k subscribers.
As I've said elsewhere, the truth is that while stats are a lot of fun, their worth all comes down to why you blog. If it's for ads and subscribers and page views, that's one thing. If it's instead about conversation and insight, it doesn't make all that much difference if you have 80 readers, 8,000 or 80,000.
CountRob
· 2 years ago
Best title EVER!
Alexandre Figueiredo
· 2 years ago
Great research! It explains a lot of doubts I had for a long time. This blog e getting better every day. I used to read another blog but now it's very annoying to read because all their links seem to forward to another site (crunchbase!) instead of the real site. ;-) Thanks a lot and congrats, Peter. Keep being the best Tech/Web2.0 blogger world wide.
Thomas Landspurg
· 2 years ago
Hello Pete,
This is a well now issue here at webwag, as we count "subscribers" and not "active users". We plan to add the active user count, however, we need an industry standard for the definition of active. Is it somebody who've accessed to the feed once a month? Once a day? With all the various caching mechanism at all the levels of the chain, it could be very difficult to count active versus subscribers, and I guess that's one of the reason why this problem is not yet solved...
Thomas Landspurg Webwag CTO...
Pete
· 2 years ago
Exactly: there are no enforced standards. Thanks, Thomas.
Sam Sethi
· 2 years ago
Thank you Peter for calling out this bullshit about certain sites numbers. For a longtime I have felt that their default position on sites has elevated their numbers beyond their actual reach and influence. This however is not a new phenomenon.
In Web 1.0 Microsoft MSN's portal homepage was for ages the default page on every PC browser. This made sure they got millions of default pageviews which they used to convince advertisers to pay higher rate cards for advertising on MSN.
Secondly as a publisher there is the double edged sword of wanting to have people read your content but also see your ads. I do not want use partial feeds, so I am looking to see if our ad server can add in adverts without using Feedburner FAN.
At blognation we will soon be announcing a new metric based on attention rather than feed numbers. Our attention solution will allow us to measure readers across the web, RSS, email, mobile etc.
We are also considering removing ourselves from Feedburner because of the lockin and serving our own RSS.
Pete
· 2 years ago
BTW: I spoke to TED about their numbers, and I'll probably be making a tweak to that part later. Interestingly, the new info from them actually strengthens my hypothesis: Feedburner counts all the "non-existent" subs as real readers. Previously, we didn't have the Feedburner data directly from one of the default feed owners. We do now. More later.
Fingerling
· 2 years ago
Seems Google made a mistake. Don't you people think that the title is little vulgar?
Mr Jones
· 2 years ago
Nice Post.
Dig a little deeper and you will find the entire blogosphere is actually just Robert Scoble creating 100,000 accounts to subscribe to his posts and yours and be his friends on startup of the day.
AGronowski
· 2 years ago
It is interesting you use "footbag.org" as the example. The individual who runs that is an employee of Google, which may help explain its placement.
Rick Klau
· 2 years ago
Hi everyone -
FeedBurner separates out subscribers, item views, and clickthroughs in each publisher's feed analytics so that we can give publishers a good overview of their audience and how much activity their feed is actually generating. In a post we wrote back in February ( http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives...), we talked about the impact of default feeds on reported numbers, as well as the differences in what each web-based reader reports. (That is to say, a Yahoo "subscriber" is not necessarily the same as a Bloglines "subscriber" or a Google "subscriber".)
Beyond the basic subscription metric, we measure activity and audience engagement which includes item views (whenever a feed item is read in an HTML-capable reader) and clickthroughs (back to a publisher's site) - both of which are additional indicators of actual feed consumption.
Hope that helps,
Rick Google (FeedBurner)
Pete
· 2 years ago
Rick,
Here's my interpretation of what you're saying there:
1. Feedburner does not have standardization for what counts as a subscriber, particularly on default feeds.
2. You do have slightly more accurate metrics available, but all these are hidden within the user's account. These include clickthroughs.
3. It's the *inaccurate* stats (the subscriber counts) that are being used to compare blogs.
edd
· 2 years ago
Calm down, don't be too upset that you didn't get included in Google's elusive bundles.
Kevin
· 2 years ago
It goes beyond that. If we aren't accurately, and responsibly, tracking who uses what and how often.. we could lead ourselves to another .com crash. Nothing like massive inflation to ruin a good thing.
Adam Hirsch
· 2 years ago
Great point Kevin. I think that there's a possibility this and similar posts will force more feed based companies to be a little more in depth in their count #s. Check out Marc Meyer, CEO of Activeweave BlogRovR's response to Pete's previous post:
Thanks for the analysis, but I don't see why you have to disparage footbag, which is a legitimate sport with thousands of active competitors worldwide.
Check out this pic I took at the 27th World Championships last year in Frankfurt, Germany:
First, awesome picture! Second, I honestly as an American had no idea this sport existed. I mean, this is hackey sack with Volleyball rules. Absolutely Crazy! If I didn't know it existed, guarantee you 99% of Americans don't know it exists either. Quite sad, looks fun!
Either way, I don't think Pete was really putting down Footbag, he was just pointing out the irony that "the Footbag Worldwide feed does not exist", yet the subscribers were so high.
Maybe people love footbag so much, they'll subscribe to a feed about it that doesn't currently exist just in case it suddenly starts existing again?
That's dedication to your sport. ;)
notenking
· 2 years ago
Google is doing a foolish action...
Beerzie
· 2 years ago
Hello, Beerzie from FILE here. A very interesting read. I had no idea that Google listed us having so many subscribers, and I too am always suspicious of ANY statistical analysis of subscribers/hits.
That being said, I have one comment you state that "This is a great boost for those sites that can get themselves listed in these bundles: often by striking a deal with the feedreader company or being friends with the owner." I want to go on the record -- because it may be of interest to your audience -- that we made no deliberate attempt to become part of Google's bundle (in fact, this is the first that I have become aware that such a thing existed.)
Moreover, we did not "strike a deal" with anyone in regards to our feeds. We offer the feed because it was easy to set up, and we thought people would like it. We are too technically inept and unconnected to do that, even if we wanted to.
Anyway, informative and interesting. Keep up the good work.
Pete
· 2 years ago
OK, I'm adding the slight disclaimer that the TEDblog example may not be as clean cut as the others.
They emailed to say they have a total of 114K subs, of which 65,650 are on Google Reader. This means the Typepad feed has been consolidated into the Feedburner one, making it much harder to run the sums. Suffice to say, 60% of their subs are on Google Reader and only 40% are elsewhere: this is highly unusual and shows the powerful skewing effect of the default feed.
Cameron Chapman
· 2 years ago
I've found that their stats are off quite a bit even without taking bundling into account. When I check the Feedburner stats for one of my blogs it shows a number that is almost double what the Google Reader numbers are showing. This is with a very small number of subscribers overall, so it's easy to pick up and see what the discrepancies are. But it's definitely a significant difference.
Anne H
· 2 years ago
I think the area of RSS subscribers is similar to other stats that aren't easily validated or audited. Your analysis does indicate that people who are part of Google bundles do get a boost. You highlighted an issue pay may have missed.
I think until there is an agreed upon and verifiable measurement system, we'll have these issues. I don't think this problem is unique to Google or Feedburner. We've been seeing these type of issues in other unaudited entities such as Alexa for awhile.
And Edwin...that was a cool picture.
Steve
· 2 years ago
Pete, Nice analysis. It has been a while since you have done a post like this and it is good to see!
Roy Klein
· 2 years ago
The footbag.org feed was actually working until at least a month ago, because for some time I was subscribed to it. Maybe the webmaster discontinued it, but I can vouch that when they added it to the subscription package it was a working feed.
And yes, hearing that a sport I participate in is a "joke sport" is not a fun experience, but I'm sure it was meant as a little funny anecdote rather than a serious remark. I'm aware that the serious side of footbag isn't very visible.
Pete
· 2 years ago
Apologies to footbag players. No offence meant. Perhaps "niche" is a better word?
BRIX
· 2 years ago
I appreciate content based opinion posts that are more than blurbs or asides. Thanks for this post. It was very helpful. I'm not suprised by the findings. I had a hunch about this some time ago.
Footbag Lover
· 2 years ago
As a footbag player, I gotta say that I was taken aback by your description of it as a "joke". May I suggest that you edit your post to use "niche" instead? We'd thank you very much :)
As for why the (footbag) feed has so many subscribers: it's likely because it is included by default when you subscribe to the "Sports" package, along with EPSN.com.
My friend Steve runs footbag.org and happens to be the head manager for Reader. His engineers included the footbag.org feed into the pre-package as a show of support / joke.
Furthermore, as I'm sure you're aware, sometimes the best sites are not up 100% of the time. I would suggest that you simply caught the footbag feed at a bad time, as I've been getting regular updates from it (and recently at that), and it's working now to be sure.
I'm a big fan of this site (except when you dis my favorite sport ;)). Keep up the good work.
John Webber
· 2 years ago
Agreed. I am not able to access the footbag.org post right now, but I also have received updates from it in the past.
In reference to Adam's comment "If I didn't know it existed, guarantee you 99% of Americans don't know it exists either.", I would argue that footbag is gaining some serious traction in the US. Check out this recent Modest Mouse music vid (footbag featured throughout the entire movie): http://youtube.com/watch?v=dk2PEKRKYMU
...I'm sure Steve will see this post and get it fixed soon...I hope so for his sake :)
-john
Adam Hirsch
· 2 years ago
First, thanks to Pete I think the world and word on "Footbag" just got a little more known. However, my confusion lies in between the footbag Sport, which seems to feature a net and team players versus the guy in the Modest Mouse video who is just a really talented hackey sack/footbagger?
- Adam Hirsch
scooba
· 2 years ago
Excellent work, its good to see that im not the only one who sees the flaws in google.
Keep up the good work Pete.
Beast
· 2 years ago
Just for the record; footbag worldwide works for me. I can post pics if you like. Maybe you guys just don't know how to use google reader ;) ?
Also the reason footbag is included in the sports is because one of the main developers of the Google Reader is also a former footbag world champion (mixed doubles I think) and former director of the IFPA, as well as still being heavily involved.
I think it was one of those semi funny in jokes that google like, and also a bit of a thank you in including it.
Eric
· 2 years ago
Ok, so I'm taking this kind of personally - sometimes it's more fun that way :).
I LOL when I read things like "sport of hacky sack, which is a bit of a joke sport even in the US" or "If I didn't know it existed, guarantee you 99% of Americans don't know it exists either."
Well, since you all are so confident that nobody knows or cares about footbag that you'd make such comments, I'm here to represent another person that does. The sport represents small community of enthusiastic athletes at all levels - beginner to the some of the best athletes in the world period. Footbag not being a main stream sport and with only the very best of the best, and with luck, making any real money at it - doesn't mean it's a joke. Just means *you* don't know about it.
So, I laugh - because I do that when someone speaks with such confidence about something they're so ignorant.
Again, I'm taking this kind of personally, obviously, so I've hardly acknowledged the main point - there are hardly 75K real subscribers to footbag.org's feed at Google's feed reader. I totally appreciate you calling this fact out - checking ad balancing the big guy. But footbag rocks :).
Scott Lawton
· 2 years ago
Pete: great data but lousy conclusions. Surely you're aware of all the controversy over page views, and myriad problems with the Technorati 100, but every page on Mashable includes: "5 million monthly pageviews ... among the Top 100 blogs". (I have no objection at all; Mashable's rise is impressive and worth touting. But subscriber stats are also useful, even though flawed.)
More details in my post, plus followups with an interactive "long tail" chart and a first draft chart of Technorati vs. Google Reader data.
Troy
· 2 years ago
I'm hoping that the APML data being promoted by Newsgator and Bloglines can address this issue. If bloggers have a way of tracking APML data, it seems this would alleviate this issue. That's why I like the trends data in Google Reader. I can see where I spend my time, and unsubscribe from those feeds that I rarely read or are rarely updated.
Andrew
· 2 years ago
I completely agree with what you have said. But not only that, as I was trying to delete all the feeds from my Google Reader account, was that it is immpossible to remove 2 or more feeds at once. I'm sure that people like me who sign up for Google Reader, and then add the feeds they read, and then move onto a different feed reader, they are probably still subscribed, even though they maybe reading it from another reader, thereby counting as two readers rather then just the one that they are.
It really is flawed, its a shame that there is no ONE accurate method of counting subscribers to a feed.
Adam Hirsch
· 2 years ago
Hey Andrew... Completely agree with you. I said this above and I'll say it again: Check out Marc Meyer, CEO of Activeweave BlogRovR's response to Pete's previous post:
All Comments
As I've said elsewhere, the truth is that while stats are a lot of fun, their worth all comes down to why you blog. If it's for ads and subscribers and page views, that's one thing. If it's instead about conversation and insight, it doesn't make all that much difference if you have 80 readers, 8,000 or 80,000.
I used to read another blog but now it's very annoying to read because all their links seem to forward to another site (crunchbase!) instead of the real site. ;-)
Thanks a lot and congrats, Peter. Keep being the best Tech/Web2.0 blogger world wide.
This is a well now issue here at webwag, as we count "subscribers" and not "active users". We plan to add the active user count, however, we need an industry standard for the definition of active. Is it somebody who've accessed to the feed once a month? Once a day?
With all the various caching mechanism at all the levels of the chain, it could be very difficult to count active versus subscribers, and I guess that's one of the reason why this problem is not yet solved...
Thomas Landspurg
Webwag CTO...
In Web 1.0 Microsoft MSN's portal homepage was for ages the default page on every PC browser. This made sure they got millions of default pageviews which they used to convince advertisers to pay higher rate cards for advertising on MSN.
Secondly as a publisher there is the double edged sword of wanting to have people read your content but also see your ads. I do not want use partial feeds, so I am looking to see if our ad server can add in adverts without using Feedburner FAN.
At blognation we will soon be announcing a new metric based on attention rather than feed numbers. Our attention solution will allow us to measure readers across the web, RSS, email, mobile etc.
We are also considering removing ourselves from Feedburner because of the lockin and serving our own RSS.
Dig a little deeper and you will find the entire blogosphere is actually just Robert Scoble creating 100,000 accounts to subscribe to his posts and yours and be his friends on startup of the day.
FeedBurner separates out subscribers, item views, and clickthroughs in each publisher's feed analytics so that we can give publishers a good overview of their audience and how much activity their feed is actually generating. In a post we wrote back in February ( http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives...), we talked about the impact of default feeds on reported numbers, as well as the differences in what each web-based reader reports. (That is to say, a Yahoo "subscriber" is not necessarily the same as a Bloglines "subscriber" or a Google "subscriber".)
Beyond the basic subscription metric, we measure activity and audience engagement which includes item views (whenever a feed item is read in an HTML-capable reader) and clickthroughs (back to a publisher's site) - both of which are additional indicators of actual feed consumption.
Hope that helps,
Rick
Google (FeedBurner)
Here's my interpretation of what you're saying there:
1. Feedburner does not have standardization for what counts as a subscriber, particularly on default feeds.
2. You do have slightly more accurate metrics available, but all these are hidden within the user's account. These include clickthroughs.
3. It's the *inaccurate* stats (the subscriber counts) that are being used to compare blogs.
http://mashable.com/2007/10/15/activeweave-blog...
Seems "explicit actions" are the way to go.
- Adam Hirsch, Mashable.com
Check out this pic I took at the 27th World Championships last year in Frankfurt, Germany:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/91193063@N00/13050...
Either way, I don't think Pete was really putting down Footbag, he was just pointing out the irony that "the Footbag Worldwide feed does not exist", yet the subscribers were so high.
- Adam Hirsch, Mashable.com
That's dedication to your sport. ;)
That being said, I have one comment you state that "This is a great boost for those sites that can get themselves listed in these bundles: often by striking a deal with the feedreader company or being friends with the owner." I want to go on the record -- because it may be of interest to your audience -- that we made no deliberate attempt to become part of Google's bundle (in fact, this is the first that I have become aware that such a thing existed.)
Moreover, we did not "strike a deal" with anyone in regards to our feeds. We offer the feed because it was easy to set up, and we thought people would like it. We are too technically inept and unconnected to do that, even if we wanted to.
Anyway, informative and interesting. Keep up the good work.
They emailed to say they have a total of 114K subs, of which 65,650 are on Google Reader. This means the Typepad feed has been consolidated into the Feedburner one, making it much harder to run the sums. Suffice to say, 60% of their subs are on Google Reader and only 40% are elsewhere: this is highly unusual and shows the powerful skewing effect of the default feed.
I think until there is an agreed upon and verifiable measurement system, we'll have these issues. I don't think this problem is unique to Google or Feedburner. We've been seeing these type of issues in other unaudited entities such as Alexa for awhile.
And Edwin...that was a cool picture.
And yes, hearing that a sport I participate in is a "joke sport" is not a fun experience, but I'm sure it was meant as a little funny anecdote rather than a serious remark. I'm aware that the serious side of footbag isn't very visible.
As for why the (footbag) feed has so many subscribers: it's likely because it is included by default when you subscribe to the "Sports" package, along with EPSN.com.
My friend Steve runs footbag.org and happens to be the head manager for Reader. His engineers included the footbag.org feed into the pre-package as a show of support / joke.
Furthermore, as I'm sure you're aware, sometimes the best sites are not up 100% of the time. I would suggest that you simply caught the footbag feed at a bad time, as I've been getting regular updates from it (and recently at that), and it's working now to be sure.
I'm a big fan of this site (except when you dis my favorite sport ;)). Keep up the good work.
I did just check it and the feed seems to still be down. You can grab another great feed about footbag here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/freedomfootbags
In reference to Adam's comment "If I didn't know it existed, guarantee you 99% of Americans don't know it exists either.", I would argue that footbag is gaining some serious traction in the US. Check out this recent Modest Mouse music vid (footbag featured throughout the entire movie): http://youtube.com/watch?v=dk2PEKRKYMU
...I'm sure Steve will see this post and get it fixed soon...I hope so for his sake :)
-john
- Adam Hirsch
Keep up the good work Pete.
Also the reason footbag is included in the sports is because one of the main developers of the Google Reader is also a former footbag world champion (mixed doubles I think) and former director of the IFPA, as well as still being heavily involved.
I think it was one of those semi funny in jokes that google like, and also a bit of a thank you in including it.
I LOL when I read things like "sport of hacky sack, which is a bit of a joke sport even in the US" or "If I didn't know it existed, guarantee you 99% of Americans don't know it exists either."
Well, since you all are so confident that nobody knows or cares about footbag that you'd make such comments, I'm here to represent another person that does. The sport represents small community of enthusiastic athletes at all levels - beginner to the some of the best athletes in the world period. Footbag not being a main stream sport and with only the very best of the best, and with luck, making any real money at it - doesn't mean it's a joke. Just means *you* don't know about it.
So, I laugh - because I do that when someone speaks with such confidence about something they're so ignorant.
Again, I'm taking this kind of personally, obviously, so I've hardly acknowledged the main point - there are hardly 75K real subscribers to footbag.org's feed at Google's feed reader. I totally appreciate you calling this fact out - checking ad balancing the big guy. But footbag rocks :).
More details in my post, plus followups with an interactive "long tail" chart and a first draft chart of Technorati vs. Google Reader data.
It really is flawed, its a shame that there is no ONE accurate method of counting subscribers to a feed.
Check out Marc Meyer, CEO of Activeweave BlogRovR's response to Pete's previous post:
http://mashable.com/2007/10/1 5/activeweave-blogrovr -screwy-feedburner-sta ts/
It's all about "Explicit Actions"
- Adam Hirsch, Mashable.com
who's the narcissist here? Your blood sugar drops if you don't get kilos of feed?