Deep Jive Interests

So, I would usually leave something like this for my “Recommended Reads”, but I thought it was of particular interest because  — well, almost everyone uses FeedBurner to manage their feeds.  Yesterday, FeedBurner posted a little something that details exactly how they manage your feeds, using TechCrunch as an example.  Why?  As you may or may not know, TechCrunch’s subscriber list exceeds 100 000 subscribers, and it only started about a year ago.  Yes, you may pick up your jaw now.

Anyway, I’m not sure if it  really answers how FeedBurner actually ‘crunches’ those subscriber numbers — after all, it sounds a bit like voodoo and witchcraft to me.  As per their own “help” section:

Subscribers is calculated by matching IP address and feed reader combinations, and then using our detailed understanding of the multitude of readers and aggregators and bots on the market to make additional inferences.

All I’ve got to ask is, what does “detailed understanding” mean?

At any rate, there are a few interesting tidbits.  Don’t forget to read up on

• What the top 5 feed readers are
• How to use feedburner to check where some of your traffic is coming from
• Understanding how to figure who is “reading” your subscriptions (i.e. the definition of “reach”).

All in all, an intersting piece on a piece of software almost everyone uses.

Check it out.