A Personal Blog
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Google: World's #1 Feed Reader
Feb 17th
Like many other folk, I caught the news that Google has begun reporting subscriber numbers. Like most folk, I probably dismissed the news as vaguely interesting and something to look into later.
This morning, when I checked b5′s FeedBurner subscriber numbers and saw that we’d broken 50K subscribers I basically chalked it up to a mixture of bringing on a few big sites (which we did), a massive recent spike in overall activity at Grey’s Anatomy News (main character may or may not have died last episode) and a glitch at FeedBurner.
Not that there are often glitches at FeedBurner, but I simply didn’t connect the dots.
See, we’ve been FeedBurner Enterprise (ie: FeedFoundry) subscribers for about 3 months now. When we started, we had about 18K subscribers to our feeds. Before this morning we had passed the 30K mark. Not bad for 3 months. But, based on 3 months of experience, seeing a more than 50% increase overnight simply didn’t seem … normal.
Then I saw Stowe’s post on his FeedBurner numbers increasing by a massive amount. I figured Stowe had tracked down the culprit. While reading his post I suddenly realized the connection: Google starts sending subscriber numbers, FeedBurner subscribers go up. Duh!
Turn out Stowe figured it out as well.
This is actually interesting, as I hadn’t looked at feed reader breakdowns in ages. I’d basically figured Bloglines accounted for 1/3 of subscribers – as that’s what it’s been for years and years.
Things have changed. Drastically.
Google is now, or is soon set to be, the world’s #1 feed reading software / destination / feature. Now, granted, the Google “FeedFetcher” numbers are for a half-dozen Google services. But, I’d assume the count is based on Google Account usage, and not usage by individual service. I’d assume. I could be wrong. If I am, there’s a slight inflation here (as some users would use feeds on multiple services).
Either way, this is a fairly fundamental shift in the feed reader market. Not a bad shift, as it at least partially means that feeds are becoming more mainstream. But it is a shift.
A few other folk, including Mashable and Danny are talking about this. Check out the Techmeme artifact for more posts.
For those who are wondering what that shift looks like, here are our top 10 feed readers, with subscriber numbers (and overall market share for our readers):
Google Feedfetcher: 14375 (29%) Bloglines: 7774 (16%) Firefox Live Bookmarks: 6062 (14%) Newsgator Online: 2644 (5%) Google Desktop: 2313 (5%) My Yahoo: 1678 (3%) Netvibes: 1625 (3%) A Java-based feed reader: 1153 (3%) Rojo: 955 (2%) Windows RSS Platform: 779 (2%)
One of the great things, though, is that we can actually break these numbers down by some vertical-specific info. I won’t do this for all our channels, but to give a brief view into some different demo/psycho-graphics, here are 3 of our largest channels with their top 3 feed readers:
Business: Google Feedfetcher, Bloglines, Firefox Live Bookmarks Technology: Google Feedfetcher, Bloglines, Firefox Live Bookmarks Entertainment: Firefox Live Bookmarks, Google Desktop, Google Feedfetcher
And a few of our smaller channels, with diverse interests?
Arts & Crafts: Google Feedfetcher, Bloglines, My Yahoo Personal Development: Google Feedfethcer, Bloglines, Firefox Live Bookmarks Travel & Culture: Bloglines, Google Feedfetcher, unidentified (followed by Firefox Live Bookmarks)
Time will tell what all this means, of course. I just find it interesting how quickly Google went from something fairly secondary to, quite literally, the single most important feed platform (as it’s more than a single reader) for us here at b5media.
Dropped MyBlogLog
Feb 9th
I’ve dropped MyBlogLog from Ensight. Nothing wrong with the service at all. Nothing to do with Yahoo acquisition. The first week of it was cool. The second was alright. Eventually it just because something that sat there though. As an experiment it was interesting. I can see why some bloggers really like it. It just wasn’t for me :)
What's the Value of Life?
Jan 16th
On b5′s forums, one of our bloggers asked what the meaning of life was. I said it was, quite obviously, 42. Aaron, our Tech Manager, retorted that I was wrong. That 42 was the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Hence, life’s meaning was 42/3. Or 14.
My response is below:
No, see, that would assume that life, the universe and everything had equal values. However it’s obvious that “everything” would include the universe (and may or may not include “life”, as “life” is fairly ambiguous in that it could mean life in general (which would be included in “everything”) or the value of YOUR life (which wouldn’t, as it’s a subjective value)).
Which means life is either a subset of the value of everything (ie: 42=everything(x+universe+life)) or completely separate (ie: 42=everything + universe + life).
Unless, of course, Adams meant “life, the universe and everything else that isn’t included”. My guess ishe meant “life as an objective stance” (as in Ingrid’s “what’s the meaning of life”, as opposed to “what’s the meaning of MY life”. Likewise, my guess is he meant everything as a separate entity to “life” and “the universe”. In fact, my guess is he meant “the magic of life”, “the magic of the universe” and “the magic of everything else that’s cool about everything else”.
In which case, the formula is certainly 42=life + universe + everything. However, even having deduced that (though the deduction could be wrong), it’s hard to imagine that 3 incredibly valuable things would all have the same core values in the answer of 42.
My supposition is that “the universe” is simply a function of “stuff” existing (ie: molecules collide and cool things happen). However “the universe” doesn’t necessarily result in “life”. So “life” is inherently more valuable than “the universe”. Not so much more valuable that it overshadows it – after all, life wouldn’t exist without the universe. But certainly of greater value.
How valuable, for example, is Wayne Gretsky’s father (had house with pond, taught Wayne to play, encouraged him daily, etc) to the value that is Wayne Gretsky. I’d argue that a talent like Gretsky is 10% genes, 15% upbringing, 40% perseverance, 30% training and 5% pure dumb luck. As a result, his father likely accounts for half his genes, half his upbringing and probably 10% of his training (since he was so involved early). Which really means Wayne’s father is worth at least 22.5% of Wayne Gretsky.
Wayne’s father would exist without Wayne, but Wayne wouldn’t exist without his father.
If we take the same figures and apply them to the formula, we might be getting somewhere.
In terms of “everything else that’s cool”, my guess is that that is a by-product (in a similar way to Wayne and his father) of both the universe and life.
So, in the tree of value, we have “everything”, which is 11.25% more valuable than both life and the universe, and life, which is 22.5% more valuable than just the universe.
Which means life is worth roughly 10.9466, the universe 8.936 and everything 22.119.
Even then, truth be told, that doesn’t tell us the meaning of life. Just the value of it.
So, I guess I was wrong in that I didn’t actually answer Ingrid’s question ;-)
On further reflection, I realized Adams had said 14 was the MEANING of life, the universe and everything. Hence, the meaning of life is, obviously, 10.9466, give or take a millenia or two.
Heading to San Francisco
Jan 16th
I’m heading to San Francisco tonight. I’ll be effectively offline until I return Sunday, though I’m reachable on my cell for anyone in the area who wants to hook up (416 726 3602).
A Reminder: Vote, Vote, Vote!!!
Jan 11th
Just a reminder, on the “build an orphanage in Mozambique” post.
Jeff’s request on The Robin Hood Fund is now sitting at #4 in the most-votes category!!!
With the end of this round only 12 days away, and with 10,000$ going to the top 2 vote receivers, just a few more votes should allow Jeff’s wish to build an orphanage for kids in Mozambique a reality!
Again, here’s what you can do:
You can voice your support in one of three ways (or all of these 3 ways):
1. Go to the Robin Hood Fund page and vote for his wish. More votes means more of a chance he’ll get the cash from the Robin Hood Fund.
2. Blog about this.
3. Give some cash from your PayPal account, even if it’s just the “what’s left” few dollars you have there, I know Jeff will really, really appreciate it.
And that’s it!
So go vote! Vote now! 5 seconds of your time could (quite literally) impact the lives of thousands of kids in Africa.
I wouldn’t be doing this if Jeff wasn’t so close :-D (yes, I’m pumped about this!)
