Feedburner has had its critics over the years. But most bloggers still use it for managing their blog RSS feeds. Even though it has problems from time to time they tended to get sorted out and we all kept on using the service.
The last few weeks there has been some buzz around the accuracy or reliability of Feedburner. Mostly the criticism is the subscriber count that Feedburner calculates and many bloggers display on their blog using the provided widgets. Subscriber counts have been fluctuating wildly (wilder than normal) and people are blaming Feedburner.
People are wondering whether they should look for an alternative or wait for Google to fix the problem. Some blogs are using different methods to calculate the average subscriber count over a longer period, to smooth out the effect of the daily fluctuations. Others are combining subscriber counts from multiple sources instead.
The Erosion of Social Proof
The idea of social proof in the context of Feedburner stats is that by displaying your subscriber account it helps convince a new visitor that your blog is popular, authoritative and worth subscribing to. In other words, a crowd attracts a crowd.
But is Feedburner really broken? As we all know, our Feedburner subscriber count is not the actual number of people subscribed to our RSS feed. Instead it is the number of subscribers who checked the feed for updates that day. So if someone doesn’t open their feed reader one day then they don’t count towards your total subscribers for that day. Hence the number always fluctuates to some degree.
So is Feedburner just telling us what we’ve been watching happen for the last couple of years?
Old Habits Die Eventually
A couple of years ago I subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds. I read them daily, very rarely letting any but the least important go more than a day or so without being checked and read.
Then my habits changed. Social news sites and social networks started appearing. Digg surfaced the most interesting gadget and hardware news to the home page, and so I didn’t need to subscribe to gadget and hardware blogs. Mega-lists of “best of” resources starting appearing, and so I didn’t need to subscribe to graphic design blogs to keep up with Photoshop tutorials.
Twitter came along, and links were shared. I could follow interesting people who Tweeted interesting stuff, instead of subscribing to their blogs. Facebook opened the walled garden and became the first destination for a lot of web users every day.
RSS, a technology that few understood to begin with, became less important to my daily information intake. And I suspect the same is true for many others.
So if fewer people are using RSS and checking it less frequently, you would expect our Feedburner subscriber counts to start reflecting that as well.
The Wise Old Bloggers
Whether deliberately or not, some veteran bloggers began taking preventative steps a long time ago for just this sort of problem. They knew from experience that all subscribers are not created equal. RSS had less value than other channels.
As they boasted their RSS subscriber count in the traditional top-right subscription box, they quietly began building their mailing lists (long before rookie bloggers around the world began chanting “the money is in the list”).
When new social networks appeared they claimed their names and brands early and rode each one’s meteoric rise or collosal failure.
Social Proof is Actually Becoming Social
Who cares what Feedburner says day to day? Email subscribers and Twitter followers is all the marketing power and social proof you need. It is about deeper connections and relationships between people with common interests.
You don’t need 100,000 Twitter followers to launch a successful product. All it takes is one or two people you trust to recommend someone, you’re not going to check their Feedburner count too.
You could scratch your head and wait for Feedburner to fix it. Or you could move with the tide and go make some new friends.
Image Credit: Flickr
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First, Paul you find the best photos!
Now, on to the topic at hand. I’ve noticed the weird fluctuations too. It’s not only the RSS feed though. The email subscriber count displayed is lower than the number of active names!
As for the money being in the list, as a veteran direct marketer, I’ve been saying that for a very long time! I confess I was (temporarily) deluded into believing the RSS crowd (being new at blogging), but now I realize my initial instincts were right.
Well I’ve got Flickr users to thank for those photos. Without them and CC I’d have nothing!
Hey I just posted an article that goes into detail how a person can manipulate the stats of Feedburner. I find the entire concept one big joke.
I do enjoy reading from the RSS feed that is updated directly in my Mac Mail program, but some bloggers are posting thousands of readers when if fact they are lying about the numbers.
http://travelenlightenment.net/feedburner-subscription-number-scam
I remember some subscriber comps in recent years where people would flat out use a static GIF with a made up number just to throw off their competition. You’ve got to wonder what is the validity of any of these stats-based “authority” indications if tricks like that can work.
I only pay attention to AWeber activity now.
Google Reader also has this “feature” where they cache on url only, and not by date. So you can’t update an article and make visible in Reader’s feed for anyone who has already read it. Intensely annoying!
Google does some things really right, others, not so much.
Some days I think they are more interested in the data than delivering a reliable, accurate service to users.
Hey Paul,
Feedburner is a Dinosaur, waiting for the final meteor.
I can’t understand why so many people still use it as an indicator for popularity.
Look, he got 3,000+ subscribers, awesome. How many subscribers do you got ? Oh, i get 240 every month !
Major reasons why I think it’s useless:
Fluctuation, like you said, is the major issue. A big fat zero on many blogs just doesn’t look good, even if you know better.
Numbers mean nothing. I know blogs who have thousands of subscribers, but their traffic is less than half of mine. Most people who subscribe never read that feed…ever again.
It’s really a one-night stand only.
With the power of social media becoming stronger every day, Feedburner (or RSS in general) will slowly vanish into oblivion…for good.
True, especially if the blogger has used a lot of contests to boost their subscriber count. What is the real value in those subscribers? Very little, in most cases.
I occasionally check my Feedburner stats – it’s been a few weeks actually, and I noticed that last week, in one day, I dipped exactly 1000 subscribers, then went back to normal. I figure if my posts are still getting shared socially and receiving comments, in combination with the traffic activity in Analytics, that everything is going as it should, and the subscriber count is really secondary.
Hey Paul, I agree with Jodi, you find some great images. I’m not really sure about the value of displaying a subscriber count widget of any kind, whether it be Feedburner, Twitter or some other sharing service. Even McDonald’s stopped counting how many hamburgers they sold years ago. But to each his own.
I’m testing Feedblitz only because I find those Aweber pop-ups very annoying. I’m sure they are effective – just awfully annoying. Primarily because I don’t subscribe to any of it. Sometimes I wish I could turn my own blog comment subscriptions off! I check the dashboard twenty times a day anyhow LOL!!
Seriously though, my primary use for Feedburner is my CommentLuv account. It works great to pull in my related posts for some LinkLuv from blogs that have the plugin installed.
Sloppily implemented popups bug me too. I’m testing my own though, trying to get the value from them without bugging the audience. So far no complaints. We’ll see.
As for subcriber numbers and widgets, there is a blog (name escapes me) that I stumbled across the other day. I couldn’t tell you how many subscribers it had because I didn’t look, but every post I checked had 150+ comments on it. Now THAT is social proof.
Paul, check out this post from Dan Zarrella which talks about testing Social Proof using the Retweet button counts and Feedburner subscriber counts. Some of the test results were surprising to him http://danzarrella.com/new-experiments-question-the-power-of-social-proof-on-the-web.html#
Ironically it appears Dan is using a similar list building plugin to the one you have installed.
I love the way he crunches numbers and tests social behavior.
Dan is always great. Thats some interesting testing he has done there.
I removed the Feedburner subscriber count from my site a while ago and was beginning to get irritated by the fluctuations. However, reading drove home something I knew on some level but had not yet connected all the dots. The conversations around posts no longer happen on the blog but in Buzz, Twitter, FB and other platforms. So, it makes sense that these same platforms would drive reading patterns. Thanks for the reality check!
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