Wednesday, February 14, 2007 5:54 AM
Ever look at the number of subscribers to your feed and wonder just why the numbers seem to bounce up and down each day?
I know I did. So I went to the source, Feedburner in my case, and read up a little bit on the subject.
The best way to describe feed subscription trends is that they are feisty. Some days your numbers are up, some days (like weekends), they can dip down. This is all normal behavior (read more about why feeds behave the way they do in our TechCrunch case study). From the Feedburner blog, Burning Questions, post The Numbers - They Go Down, They Go Up
The Techcrunch case study referenced above is highlighted in an earlier post from last September, A Peek Inside TechCrunch's 100k Subscriber Milestone. Now, 100,000 subscribers may not be in the realm of possibility for many of us (100,000 subscribers is significantly more than many magazines!), but the post is really about much more than that. Beyond laying out the whys and hows of TechCrunch's growth, the post thoroughly covers feeds and feed subscriptions (at least through the eyes of Feedburner).
For example, are you aware of a metric called "Reach?" While the subscriber number is a measure of how many people have opted in to receive a feed, "Reach" is the total number of people who have taken action — viewed or clicked — on the content in a feed. Peek Inside TechCrunch's 100k Subscriber Milestone.
Also, what about "Uncommon Uses?" Once content is out there, in distribution land, it can be really tough to keep track of where it's being picked up and resyndicated. FeedBurner helps TechCrunch identify “Uncommon Uses” of feed content. In other words, the places where TechCrunch content shows up beyond the aggregators and feed readers that we've catalogued. These references could be other TechCrunch sites, news filters for specific niche content, a blog assembled from feeds, or even spam blogs. Peek Inside TechCrunch's 100k Subscriber Milestone.
These are just a couple of the factoids covered. The posts highlighted above, and the Burning Questions blog itself, offer a lot more detail on the subjects of feeds and subscriptions. If these topics interest you, the posts and blog noted above are recommended reading.