Comments on: Being the Big Blog

Being the Big Blog

blahblahblah — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:32:32 -0800

For those times when MeFi isn't enough on its own: Google Reader has just started showing the number of subscribers to various blogs, adding hard numbers to the existing top blog listings, which use links to measure popularity. Here is a detailed comparison between TechMeme's Top 100 and actual subscribers, as well as a list of top blogs by subscriber in a neat embedded spreadsheet. They offer a good way to find interesting things to read.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:35:30 -0800

For reference, MetaFilter has 5,592 (plus another 1,000 or to subscribing to other URLs) and AskMe another 2,497.

By: geoff.

geoff. — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:00:37 -0800

Did I see Perez Hilton only once, as a number 13? I have a hard time believing celebrity gossip rags aren't near the top. I'd be more interested in the demographics and how long the site is viewed. I have a feeling that types like Perez Hilton probably have demographics skewed to visit many times for short periods and with high disposable income, or at least the propensity to spend like they do. Such sites would be more valuable in ad generation than Engadget which is much more narrow in its target audience.

By: twsf

twsf — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:22:42 -0800

Great! This helped me find a half dozen MORE gadget blogs I wasn't subscribed to! /sarcasm

By: sindark

sindark — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:04:30 -0800

Sorry for being blind, but where does it actually show the number of subscribers?

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:15:18 -0800

You have to click "Add Subscription" then type the name of the feed and in the results it will show you the number of subscribers. Kottke is killing us with about 78,000 total subscribers.

By: afx237vi

afx237vi — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:15:59 -0800

Sindark, go to Google Reader, click Add Subscription and then search for the name of the site (but don't put the full URL in). It confused me too. I think it would have been a tad helpful if one of the four links actually explained how to do the thing you're talking about!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:20:21 -0800

I'll never understand why PVRblog has 69,848 subscribers and mefi has much less.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:28:35 -0800

Because you can't comment via RSS. And the manual reloading of MeFi is what makes it so ADD-tastic.

By: serazin

serazin — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:28:37 -0800

Do you think that's true mathowie? I wonder how they're tracking exactly...

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:29:48 -0800

I think that reading the RSS feeds for MeFi and AskMe are a radically different experience than being logged in and browsing around the blue or the green. For one, if you are reading MeFi in GoogleReader and want to comment, you have to click on a post and then login to MeFi (at which point you are logged into both GoogleReader and MeFi) and that kind of interrupts the process of just scrolling through feeds/posts. GoogleReader is not GoogleParticipator. However, since the deleted posts usually appear in the RSS feeds, I have a fun time reading the feeds and finding something ridiculous only to click on it and see that it is, of course, deleted. That could be a sport for nerds like me: Deleted FPP or Not?

By: furtive

furtive — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:47:45 -0800

This only confirms my supposition that 99% of people don't know what RSS is, which is a crying shame. Of course, each time I show someone something like Miro they just go gagga.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:15:20 -0800

I've added MeFi to my Google RSS Feed™©®, but I almost never use it. GuyZero is right. You have to visit MeFi to get the full experience.

By: batmonkey

batmonkey — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:25:35 -0800

mattbucher: I play that game, too!

By: escabeche

escabeche — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:35:00 -0800

Yeah, I use Google Reader for everything but MeFi.

By: sfenders

sfenders — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:35:04 -0800

you have to click on a post and then login to MeFi Nope. You can leave your browser permanently logged in to MeFi. I've copied the cookie to several computers, and haven't seen the login page for five years or so. I'm not really sure how useful it is to rate blog popularity based on counting only the people sophisticated enough to use RSS, but either in love with Google or too lazy to find something better than Google Reader.

By: bru

bru — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:37:28 -0800

I use RSS only for sites that I don't visit every day, those that I may forget. So for me, RSS means "less visited sites".

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:40:38 -0800

I don't see the point in rating the popularity of a website by counting the number of people that read it. I mean, come on, popularity isn't about numbers is it? I also disagree with basing population numbers on numbers of people. I think colours would be so much nicer. (Example: How many people live in the United States? Answer: Forest Green).

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:58:26 -0800

By "subscribers," you mean people who use RSS, right? This is a flawed, self-selecting metric. In the same way that Alexa ranking tells you how many marketingfolk read your website, RSS tally will tell you how many techgeeks read your site. Personally? I've never had a use for RSS. I actually like visiting websites. But that may just be because I'm old. (shrug)

By: roofus

roofus — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:05:59 -0800

My blog seems to have almost as many Google Reader subscribers as daily visitors, suggesting that most "bloggy" people do know about RSS now.

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:52:53 -0800

I'm not really sure how useful it is to rate blog popularity based on counting only the people sophisticated enough to use RSS, but either in love with Google or too lazy to find something better than Google Reader. Agreed. Aren't these numbers extremely low compared to actual usage? (please no sample-size arguments. please!)

By: psyche7

psyche7 — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:59:24 -0800

Here's mefi vs kottke vs pvrblog on Alexa. Most people don't read metafilter in syndication. Information is something you can send me, but community is a place I go to hang out and enjoy the company.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:41:37 -0800

When MeFi isn't enough on its own, it's time to step away from the computer and go for a walk.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:54:24 -0800

Google Reader subscribers are not The Internet. (Only Al Gore is The Internet. That's why he has a medal and you don't.)

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:48:36 -0800

I've spent most of the day trying to figure out and articulate why this makes me want to bite the throat out of somebody. Best I can do is probably because the bulk of the traffic to my own sites these days is random googlenauts searching for 'bottle fuck' and other lovely I'mFeelingLuckyisms. Which might change if I spent less time here and actually wrote something once in a while. Ah well.

By: peacay

peacay — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:08:37 -0800

Hasn't bloglines being doing this all along? If you were going to crunch stats, why not include bloglines (still possibly? the leading feedreader) and feedburner with the googlereader numbers? Nevertheless, it still seems to me like combing out the bellybutton fuzz to judge the quality of one's navel. I donot subscribe to the idea in the last sentence of this fpp.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:11:55 -0800

I unsubscribed to the Metafilter RSS feed because the headlines are post titles, not the (often more explanatory) text that appears on the front page. Anyway, MeFi's one site I don't mind reloading the front page of every so often.

By: blasdelf

blasdelf — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:29:16 -0800

Yes, Bloglines has been doing this kind of tracking for FOUR FUCKING YEARS. The main feed for the blue has 18,085 subscribers via Bloglines.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:52:06 -0800

Al Gore is a series of tubes?