Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Before you read this post, you might want to know a little bit more about subscribing and rss so that you can keep things in context! Got it? Great.
Feedburner is a tool that many bloggers (including myself) use to:
a) Provide blog readers with an rss feed of their posts
b) Track their rss subscription statistics (ie: how many people are subscribed to their blog)
Without a doubt it’s a decent tool, but here’s the problem: it’s not terribly reliable. Just check out a screenshot of my supposed subscription stats over the last couple of weeks:
Feedburner Stats
These stats lead me to believe one of two things:
1) I have extremely fickle blog readers and lost 10% of them one day and gain back 15% the next day (not to mention on some days all of them stop subscribing and then the number jumps back up the next day)
2) The numbers aren’t accurate
Neither a terribly good conclusion to draw, and I’m even more incredulous at this because Feedburner has been owned by Google since 2007. Given the great stats provided by Google Analytics, why has nothing been done to increase accuracy with Feedburner after almost 18 months?
But besides the fact that inaccuracy bugs me (and many people on Twitter), there is a bigger issue. Remember point a? That Feedburner actually provides the link for readers to subscribe? That’s what scares me. Should Google decide tomorrow that Feedburner isn’t worth what they paid for it and shut it down or leave it to die, means that all our blog readers will be pointed to a metaphorical dead end. And given the lack of innovation and current state of affairs, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that were to happen eventually.
I know when I switched rss feeds from the old blog to this I lost a lot of readers and traffic, but that was my choice. I would certainly hate for it to happen because of poor maintenance or a poor business decision in 2007. Do you worry about this? Does it bug you that your stats aren’t accurate? Be heard!
Tags: bloggers, feedburner, feedburner reliability, Google, migrating rss feeds, rss feeds, rss statistics
Posted in Google, Poor Practices | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
RSS really changed the way I used the internet when I first discovered it late last year. If you’re not using RSS, take 10 minutes to read this and your online life will be much better for it! The 10 minutes will pay itself back many times over.
I promised Ingrid I’d do this post this week, apparently I’m too late because she discovered it for herself and guess how she feels about it?
Ready to discover some “awesome shit” for the uses of RSS for yourself? Read on.
What Is RSS And Why Should I Care?
RSS stands for really simple syndication. In a capsule, what it does it feeds you updates from websites and blogs you follow. For example 20 of your friends have blogs, so you visit each of these blogs from your bookmarks once or twice a day to see if they’re updated. With RSS, you don’t have to do that anymore. When your friend’s blog is updated, you’ll see it updated on your RSS reader.
In short, instead of “going out” to look for your content, they’ll just “come in” to you naturally. Why waste time visiting 20 blogs a day only to find that 16 of them aren’t updated? That’s valuable time you could’ve spent on something else.
Ok That’s Great. So… What Do I Do?
Well first you head on over to Google Reader and log in. Not a problem if you’re signed up with at least one Google service (and who isn’t, right?). It’ll probably be blank since you haven’t added any RSS feeds yet. But that’ll change soon.
So now you head over to one of the blogs you frequent (like say, mine) and look for something that says “Subscribe” with a little logo. Something like this:
Right click on the icon and choose “copy link location”. Got it?
Head back to Google Reader, on the left you’ll see a link to add subscriptions that looks like this:
Click on it, a text box will appear, paste the link location inside and you’re all set to go! Your Google Reader page should now look a little something like this:
So now you’re done! Every time I update this blog, you’ll know when you visit Google Reader. Do this for all the blogs you follow and voila! time saved permanently.
There are lots of things you can do on Google Reader as well like share and star items, but the first step is to just subscribe to a couple of blogs and get used to information finding you, instead of having to hunt for it.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to my blog by following these steps, and let me know if this guide helped you and if RSS makes a great improvement to your online habits. I’m betting it will. Next thing you should do is pass the link to this handy RSS how-to guide to a friend and help them make their internet life a little better too.
If for some reason this guide didn’t help or just confused you even more, please let me know in the comments!
And just for your viewing pleasure, here’s a Common Craft video on RSS in Plain English (if my blog post wasn’t plain enough).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwtmOPdrEL8]
Tags: blog subscriptions, common craft rss video, finding information online, google reader, how to use rss, letting information find you, really simple syndication, rss 101, rss feeds, rss logo, rss reader, rss subscriptions, saving time with rss, using rss, why use rss
Posted in Blogs, social media | 11 Comments »
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Just over a week ago I highlighted a chance to get on AssetBar as provided by Louis Gray, as well as introduce LinkRiver, picked up from the same source.
I don’t know how many people took up those invitations, but I sure did and I have to admit my reaction is kinda mixed. I liked the features of AssetBar, but not the UI (user interface). I liked LinkRiver’s functions, but found it a little hard to find friends. All in all, great products, but I wasn’t sure they would ever take the place of Google Reader. Not that it really mattered, I wasn’t looking for a replacement, just different ways of using the same RSS function on the web.
As a pretty typical Internet user, my attention span isn’t great, and I thought “Ok nice programme, doesn’t do a lot for me, I’ll try to keep it in mind.” What changed it was that creators from both applications dropped me a message at my blog to say “look out for this” or “just to clarify this”.
In other words: they were listening. I commented on this somewhere, which lead to Louis beating me to the punch (on time, but not message), that companies that listen to their users will win in the end
And that alone was enough for me to consciously set aside time to continually explore their applications, and I’m sure one day they’ll give Google Reader a run for their money.
If you’ve had similar stories, or other such applications/programmes to share, feel free to comment and share them!
By the way, I am well aware that these posts are just flying over the heads of many of my friends, but I’m going to be introducing 2 things that have totally changed my internet usage habits: RSS and del.icio.us. So if you’ve been one of them who’s been telling me “your blog is so technical now” or “why do I want to be even more connected?”. Stay tuned and read on.
Tags: aggregators, assetbar, centralisers, google reader, linkriver, listen to consumers, louis gray, rss feeds
Posted in Blogs, Search, Social Networks, social media | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
For all you early adopters, the AssetBar invites have been re-opened over at Louisgray, don’t miss it this time!
There’s a little technical requirements with OPML, but just click at the buttom of the page for a simple guide on YouTube.
I’ve already signed up and am very, very excited to explore the social features of sharing what essentially is your RSS feeds.
If you do sign up, do add me as a friend as well, my user name is uniquefrequency (surprise!)
Tags: asset bar, assetbar, rss, rss feeds
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
Louisgray is very quickly becoming one of my top “must reads” whenever something comes from his RSS feed. Late January he alerted the blogosphere about AssetBar, and now he has the latest on LinkRiver.
So we already use Google Reader or some other RSS reader, why LinkRiver? Without trying it out yet, the biggest draw for me is that is aggregates everything from your RSS feeds to Twitter to Del.icio.us bookmarks into one central location. As Louis says:
harnesses your RSS streams from multiple services, including Google Reader shared items, Twitter, del.icio.us, Yahoo! Bookmarks and others, and posts them to a single “Stream”. As your friends join the service, or you choose to subscribed to other LinkRiver users, these small streams become a “River” of shared links, hence the name.
To get a real good idea, check out Louis’s stream right here. I for one am already sold and have sent in my beta application.
The one negative that I can see coming out of it is if someone is pushing similar feeds on social bookmarks, Google Reader and Twitter, and then it could get very tiresome to deal with. I suppose we’ll find out soon won’t we?
Do you keep your feeds/updates central? Or is there some other way you keep on top of everything? Let me know.
Tags: aggregator, assetbar, blogosphere, centraliser, delivious, google reader, link river, linkriver, louis gray, louisgray, must read, must reads, rss, rss feeds, twitter
Posted in social media | 3 Comments »
