502-442-7914 howdy@nowsourcing.com

Double the RSS Subscribers? Thank You, FriendFeed!

friendfeed-logoThe popular real-time feed aggregator, FriendFeed, can bring a bit of traffic to a blog. As of today, FriendFeed’s Kevin Fox has announced it is adding its subscriber count to the number of RSS subscribers.

Site admins should start seeing a spike, possibly very significant, in the amount of RSS subscribers to their feed. It will show up in the statistics as “friendfeedagg”. NowSourcing is one of those prime examples, as you’ll see in the image below:

nowsourcing-friendfeed-chart

NowSourcing subscribers, sorted by RSS reader used.

Although this amounts to a substantial ‘bonus’  of sorts to a blog’s overall statistics, some say that very little difference is made. At some level this is true, but it does finally account what some folks use to keep up on new posts into the numbers. These numbers do make a difference, as RSS readers that have a sharing function can provide more exposure, even a potentially viral effect.

So, what can FriendFeed do for your blog? The people that subscribe to you on FriendFeed actually want to read what you have to say across the board. Not only is this simply a ‘feed’ of new posts, but it is a socialized RSS reader that allows you to connect in real time. It’s a great way to connect with your regulars, in addition to spreading the word out to those for whom your site is relevant, but hadn’t yet hit their radar.

Give it a shot. Boost your subscribers and your readership by taking advantage of this new feature.

If you aren’t already, be sure to add NowSourcing on FriendFeed.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

13 Comments

  1. Rob Diana

    If you are talking about how to “measure” social media, that is an entirely different measurement. The subscriber numbers for a blog were measuring something more specific. My concern is greater than just FriendFeed doing this, but the trend we may see with more social applications implementing this type of reporting.

    Rob Dianas last blog post..Subscriber Counts Now Mean Nothing

  2. michelfortin (Michel Fortin)

    Twitter Comment


    @SuzeMuse Susan, here’s your answer: [link to post]

    – Posted using Chat Catcher

  3. michelfortin (Michel Fortin)

    Twitter Comment


    Reading: “Double the RSS Subscribers? Thank You, FriendFeed! | NowSourcing” ( [link to post] )

    – Posted using Chat Catcher

  4. raavi (Mihalcea Razvan)

    Twitter Comment


    RT @nowsourcing Double the RSS Subscribers? Thank You, FriendFeed!|NowSourcing [link to post] (via @tweetmeme)

    – Posted using Chat Catcher

  5. ArielaRoss (Ariela)

    Twitter Comment


    Double the RSS Subscribers? Thank You, FriendFeed! [link to post]

    – Posted using Chat Catcher

  6. lorenbaker (lorenbaker)

    Twitter Comment


    Double the RSS Subscribers? Thank You, FriendFeed! : [link to post]

    – Posted using Chat Catcher

  7. Brian Wallace

    @Rob Diana: it’s definitely part of a bigger issue. People are reading blogs differently than they were a year ago. RSS has never really gone beyond 8-9% penetration anyway. People are counting on other people to direct them to news and resources. Twitter/Facebook/Friendfeed and more show them the way.

    I could go on for quite a bit more…tell ya what, I’ll do a better response as an actual post rather than in the comment. Cool?

    @David, Michel, raavi, Ariela, Loren – thx for stopping in, hope you enjoyed 🙂

  8. George Bounacos

    We saw the same exact same thing when we did our metrics a few days ago.

    What’s interesting [and I’m still pushing Feedly resting on top of Google Reader for blogs] is that the online marketing world seemed to all reactivate on FriendFeed within a few weeks of each other. We last saw that shift with Twitter. Everyone joined. Everyone shrugged their shoulders and went back to other social media. Then everyone returned. Now it’s a haven for pitchmen of every type and drove the conversations to… FriendFeed.

    Funny thing: someone wrote me and asked why I was looping Facebook to FriendFeed and vice versa. The audiences are totally different. There are folks just entering Facebook now who won’t ever hear of FriendFeed.

    P.S. Am assuming that’s CommentLuv below. Awfully fine installation of it. Nice work!

    George Bounacoss last blog post..5 Browser Tools To Use Daily

  9. Brian Wallace

    @George Bounacos: marketers and most Internet users will go to where the action is. Most people weren’t on Twitter in 2007 – just the influencers – and that’s basically how it should be. Given the number of social media sites out there, one wouldn’t have enough time in the day to frequent them all.

  10. Tad Chef

    The FeedBurner numbers were flawed before the change but are now almost meaningless. That’s sad. It was a useful metric for business bloggers. You can post pictures of naked celebs on FriendFedd to artificially inflate your “subscribers” number 😉

  11. Brian Wallace

    @Tad Chef: always good to see you here, Tad. How’s the naked celebs biz going? 😉
    Kidding! Feedburner was still basically inaccurate (read: people didn’t read all their feeds) and unreliable (read: down or missing large amounts of readers).

  12. jlbraaten

    Oh wow very cool. Looks like I’m going to have to sign up with them.