And now.. the friendfeed numbers are gone from the statistics. This is very good - philosophically, but ego-centric clients go ape-shit.

Feedburner is a pox on Google's brand until they figure something out. No support. No consistency. I expect more.

And now.. the friendfeed numbers are gone from the statistics. This is very good - philosophically, but ego-centric clients go ape-shit.

Feedburner is a pox on Google's brand until they figure something out. No support. No consistency. I expect more.

It is optional, you don't have to give Feedburner your RSS feed at all, and you don't have to use the same one.

There are plenty of methods to create an extra RSS feed, maybe as a separate Feedburner feed.

I agree with Aaron to some extent that it is a measure of attention, though as I suggested over a year ago, when it does get implemented it should somehow reflect active users.

I don't think Feedburner has measured exact subscriber numbers for a long time - as an example there used to be a jump in numbers if your feed was shared in Google Reader.

For many blogs the real attention is in email lists and twitter followers, or even Facebook.

So now I know why my subscribers jumped so much but my page views didn't! Basically the Feedburner number is meaningless. Kind of like Technorati authority number -- a quaint reminder of the past.

Thanks for the link love and glad you agree Dave. Feedburner seems to have done very little right...I'm down for a change already.

Failburner does make me feel far cooler about myself though. My count when up something like 300%. Woot! You are right the program sucks though.

Couldn't agree more, Dave. I also syndicate my blog to my facebook profile where I have over 1000 friends so, by this poor logic, shouldn't that be another 1000 blog subscribers?
This makes no sense and really undermines their service. I also most certainly agree a little notification from them would have been nice. I can't very well count on Dave Fleet to update me on all the changes to the services I subscribe to, now can I???

I think the move accurately reflects "reach" which is what these stats are supposed to communicate. RSS is useless if you're actually measuring subscribers. I mean, it has it's use, but RSS is a syndication mechanism and a much more appropriate metric is reach. Friendfeed Subscribers are part of reach. I agree with the change myself.

Meaningless change for me, considering FeedBurner has always counted bots among subscribers, not only people. FeedBurner includes unverified email subscribers, too. So how is this FriendFeed move different? You're still seeing higher numbers than physical verified people.

Moreover, Dave, it's like Twitter follower numbers. You've twittered for a while and I'll hazard a guess 25% or more of your followers are inactive accounts who joined and followed you once upon a time and then no longer use it and never unfollowed you.

I wouldn't worry about it. Be more concerned with the frequency of time between post submission and syndication.

I think David's post was right-on and you reiterated it: just because you subscribe to someone on Friendfeed doesn't mean you read their blog. Heck, with all the noise on Friendfeed it would be hard to even see when they post something, since it gets lumped in with their Twitter, Facebook, Delicious or Flickr updates. And with Friendfeed now allowing direct import of those you follow on Twitter, it makes the numbers even more bogus. I certainly don't subscribe via RSS Reader to the blogs of every single person I follow on Twitter.

The lack of communication from Google/Feedburner is perhaps the most vexing issue. The change should have been communicated and the option to turn off the Friendfeed import should be the default option.

So often, people end up continuing to use a platform with poor service out of habit or because there's no real alternative. But this type of action from Feeburner may be what it takes to really get bloggers to reevaluate and move to something else.