I have seen a handful of sites switch away from FeedBurner recently. (I, II, III) Ben from openswitch led the charge saying, “…in the interest of keeping Open Switch as self-contained as possible I’ve opted to simply offer up my standard WordPress feed alone.”
All this activity got my interest peaked. Well wouldn’t you know it that Aaron Bazell from Technosailer just published a podcast interview with Rick Klau of FeedBurner?
Aaron offered to ask questions from readers so I submitted one. I was fortunate enough to get picked to have it asked:
With most modern browsers supporting XML and many site stats programs (like Mint) counting subscriptions what is the advantage to the average Joe to use FeedBurner to host his feeds instead of keeping the subscriptions internal?
Rick answered quite confidently on the advantages of FeedBurner that go beyond simple analytics. Here are a few chicken scratches I took from the podcast.
Providing annalytics on feed subscribers is not the exclusive focus for the majority of publishers. They have an interface for users to get value out of thier feed. Analyze provides
Optimize adds functinality to your feed. del.ic.ious. flikr. feed-flare with item specific links. Digg. Technorati. Netscape. Open platform you can build your own functinality.
Knowing where your feed is being consumed. (bloglines, Google Reader, Firefox Live Bookmarks, etc…)
Publicity suite to help increase the visibilty of your content. The headline annimater. Widget integration. Email subscription.
The average blogger probably doesn’t have the programming skill to incorporate additional functionality to their feed.
Add network. Bloggers with a descent audience they can monetize their feed.
I am staying with FeedBurner, and here’s why
- Hundreds of Thousands of Weblogs are using FeedBurner to burn their feed (354,678 publishers with 624,461 feeds). Hardly anyone is thrown off to see http://feeds.feedburner.com/fightingtostayawake instead of http://thefightspot.com/feed.
- Feed Counter Icon. I like going to other sites and seeing their feedcounter. Even if it only shows 3 or 4 readers. I think, “Hey. 4 people think this blog is worth reading.” Those numbers makes me feel like there’s a community. If I subscribe to the feed I can be a part of something. It’s kinda like peer pressure.
- Email Subscription. Currently 10% of my subsriptions are via email. I would hate to cut those wonderful people out of the loop.
What are you using on your site? Why?
P.S. Do you have my feed? If not, then you know what to do.
Adam Parker said:
I use feedburner for the email subscriptions, the stats on readers and umm I think thats it. I might also start using the feed counter icon per your recommendation… or should I say peer pressure.
Oh, and yes, I have your feed.
BTW, could you point me to a resource that shows me how to put the “Notify me of followup comments via email” on the comment page?
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 9:57 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Adam: It’s a WP plugin, “Subscribe to Comments” and I love it for two reasons:
1. I love it on other people’s sites because if I comment on a post and I am interested in the author’s response or in follow up comments I can have them e-mailed to me instead of having to remember to check back on that post later.
2. I noticed a jump in commenter participation on my site after I installed the plugin.
You can get it here.
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 10:14 am
Phil Bowell said:
I’ve recently switched from Feedburner to Mint and I’m seeing a completely different set of numbers. Feedburner had me topping out at 24 or there abouts, whereas according to Mint I’m averaging over 60 subscribers. I’ve only been using it for a few days, so I’m waiting to see the fuller picture, but I’m shocked at the figures. I have a post coming about it too.
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 10:37 am
Eric Olson said:
@ Phil: One of the reasons for the difference in counts could lie in the redirects. If you were not redirecting your source feed to FeedBurner we were not counting anyone subscribed to that feed and were only counting those subscribed to the FeedBurner feed itself. If you were to implement a redirect we would be able to count both subscribers to the FeedBurner feed and subscribers to your source feed.
Cheers,
Eric Olson
Publisher Services - FeedBurner
312.756.0022 x2034
erico@feedburner.com
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 10:46 am
Adam Parker said:
@Eric Olson (or whoever can answer this question): How do you redirect your source feed to feedburner?
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 10:55 am
Ralph Dagza said:
@adam
You can use a wp plugin called feedburner redirect
Im using mint because its self hosted
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 11:33 am
Ben G. said:
Yeah, if you’re using feedburner and wp you really should be using the feedburner redirect to get a more accurate view of how many subscribers you have.
I agree that the different feed address pointing to feedburner doesn’t throw people off anymore.
Ultimately it comes down to personal preference. I personally find it annoying to have people’s delicious feed, flickr feed, (whatever) feed included in their main blog feed. But then, that’s just me. I know there are quite a few people who like that kind of thing. To me, it’s just clutter in my feedreader.
I used to enjoy displaying my feed count but once I started topping 400 subscribers I started to feel like the feedcounter was just the lastest version of the page-hit counter, remember those? Those fell by the wayside for several reasons, one of which was they gave the impression of “hey, look how popular I am” and that’s just something I didn’t want to be associated with. When I see a blog with a feed counter with 50 or so subscribers I don’t think they’re being vain, but when there are 5,000 subscribers I’m thinking “Now you’re just bragging.” And that turns me off to the blog. Again, that’s just my opinion and there are quite a few people who enjoy seeing those feedcounts.
But I think the biggest market feedburner has is with people who don’t know how to, or don’t want to mess with their feeds manually. I’d guess that’s about 80% of bloggers right there who would find great use in feedburner; and that’s OK. I have no problem with a person using feedburner. I guess it’s sort of my personal computer/blogging philosophy. I’m using Linux because I don’t like being tied to one megalomaniac company; similarly, I don’t want to rely on anyone else for my blogging as long as I can help it.
Right now, the only company I’m relying on is my hosting provider. And that’s just an instance of what I stated above: I’m using them because I don’t know how to, and don’t want to run my own server (at this point in time).
Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough. Time to let someone else speak ;).
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Phil Bowell said:
@Eric, I was using the plugin Adam mentioned to re-direct my feed, although I was late in implementing it but it was still there for a good few months before I switched.
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 12:46 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Eric: Thanks for stopping by and leaving your comment.
@ Ben: I never thought of big feedcounters as bragging. They’re more like the population signs you see when driving into a city. If the place you’re at has populatation 3 then chances are you won’t find a theme park or a steak house.
* Granted that’s not the best example because there are many stellar blogs that have excellent content and not too much exposure yet.
I find it helpful when I find a site for the first time and see several thousand subscribers. (like paulstamaiou.com or problogger.net) Right away that tells me there is probably something worth reading.
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Ben G. said:
That’s very true. I can see that. Good point. I suppose then, that they’re just one more way to promote your blog? I don’t know.
I think since I started blogging, my focus has shifted. Early on I wanted to be “popular” or whatever, and that was a good goal. But now I’m not as concerned with it. I’m not saying that wanting to be run a popular blog is a bad thing; I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that while I started out wanting a popular blog, now I’m not as concerned with it. Perhaps that shift in my desires is something that played a part in my decision to remove the feedcount? I’m not sure.
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 1:05 pm
ben said:
I was about to put my feed counter icon up,but it said 2 readers and it was a big blow to my self-confidence
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 3:02 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Ben: Your feed stats are 24 hours old. And Sunday is always a slow day. Try again tomorrow. Monday’s are usually the biggest day.
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Ben G. said:
Yeah, and keep in mind too, Ben, that your feed count can vary significantly from day to day. it’s nothing to worry about.
Posted on March 5, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Jesse Gardner said:
“Hundreds of Thousands of Weblogs are using FeedBurner to burn their feed.”
If hundreds of thousand of weblogs were jumping off a clif…
;D
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 7:45 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Jess: How about “Hundreds of thousands of people already jumeped off a clif called blogging.”
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 8:23 am
Jesse Gardner said:
I pulled the whole “pretending to jump” thing as everyone went headlong over the edge. Great fun.
Seriously, though. I think FeedBurner is great (I’ve also used FeedBlitz with great success). I just found your first point funny, that’s all.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 8:29 am
{Shawn} said:
@ Jesse: Ok, o.k. The truth is I signed up with feedburner because of peer pressure. I couldn’t help it.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 8:43 am
Andy White said:
Biggest plus for me with Feedburner is the fact that if I change the address of my feed source it doesn’t affect anyone who subscribes. As long, of course, as I remember to update the feed source in feedburner. This helped me a ton recently when I played around with my feeds.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 12:34 pm
{Shawn} said:
@ Andy: That’s an excellent point.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Ronalfy said:
Shawn,
Another reason why FeedBurner is so important:
Right my my site is having MySQL difficulties and is experiencing sporadic downtime. If my site was delivering my feed to everybody, this would be problematic. Since my feed is hosted with FeedBurner, my feed subscribers don’t notice any difference.
Posted on March 7, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Do You Display Your Feed Count? | Fighting to Stay Awake said:
[…] week’s post regarding FeedBurner brought up some good points about displaying feed stats. As a test, I put up […]
Posted on March 15, 2007 at 2:32 pm