Getting a Read on Active Users

Active Users of a feed is a very hard number to try and estimate.

A lot of sites will flaunt RSS numbers, but from casual observation, it seems people rarely unsubscribe from feeds.

Sometimes webmasters and bloggers get a clue when a feed is moved and you can see old subscription numbers vs new subscriptions.

Yesterday I read about PVRWire shutting down on Jason Calacanis’ blog.  Tonight I read the farewell from AdJab.

These, and any other blogs shutting down over at Weblogs, Inc. have an opportunity to test out their active RSS base.  They can keep the feed urls going and watch the subscription numbers, and how quickly they decrease.  Sure, everyone doesn’t unsubscribe right away, but over the course of a few months you should be able to get a good read on things.

I know a lot of people don’t want to know these numbers as they feel it can hurt promotion, but for accuracy’s sake, I think it’d be a good experiment.

Just a thought.

Anyway, so long to AdJab, I was a loyal reader.  Chris, Adam, Bob, Ryan, and Tom, did a great job over there.

Posted by David M Singer on Feb 01, 2007 at 02:00 AM

Comments:

  1. Here's an interesting idea from David Singer, the guy who runs the VodkaFish blog. With AOL shutting down a number of the Weblog's Inc blogs (including AdJab, which Tom and I wrote for regularly) it would be fascinating to see…

    Posted by http://www.openthedialogue.com/2007/02/tracking_rs on Feb 01, 2007 at 12:35 PM
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