1,511,000: the number of subscribed RSS readers of TechCrunch, according to the Feedburner Widget as I type this post. Given the number is up significantly from the 600,000 odd subscribers we had yesterday, I’m calling it a Feedburner bug.
Feedburner has had a long history of doing strange things with the subscriber counter, and TechCrunch’s readership (if the counter is to be believed) can fluctuate by over 50,000 readers from day to day, but I’ve never seen a 900,000 jump.
If you’ve just gained (or even lost) an extra hundred thousand readers, or perhaps even a million, let us know in the comments.
Update (MA): Occam’s Razor; Feedburner’s CEO Dick Costolo has confirmed it was a bug and that it will be fixed shortly.
LOL – I posted about it too:
http://www.cent...illion-new-subs
From my simple research, other sites appear about the same as the day previous.
Our sites are all still the same as yesterday.
The subscriber stats on my blog have often doubled from one day to the next without any posts being made, nor an increase in traffic. Today, I’m at my highest subscriber counter ever, which may be related to the issues on TechCrunch (fingers crossed it isn’t – I like subscribers!). I remember Read Write Web losing, and subsequently gaining, a third of its’ subscribers in a short space of time. I’m surprised we haven’t seen much more fuss over this (unless I’ve missed it all) – Google Analytics would’ve been blasted over bugs like this.
The important thing to remember as I wrote about before is that rss subs 2007 = hits 1996. Any marketer who makes marketing decisions based on subs alone has a fool for a client.
http://www.cent...s-equal-to-hits
congrats
Using a well known Feedburner problem, this small app allows to pump feedburner stats.
There is a pretty joke Italian tool:
http://www.deea...Tessarolizr.htm
This is not a but. Me and my million friends registered yesterday. So gratz Techcrunch!
If it´s a bug,normally the origin is the user agent reporting Feedburner the subscribers.
Allready happened and was always for the same reason.
I remember one of them when everyone got a 50,866 subscription boost, because of a bug in Netvibes
http://forums.f...opic.php?t=4712
No change on the sites we have using it.
I would not blame FeedBurner – the fault is generally with the different online RSS readers (and bots) that are reporting subscriber numbers to FeedBurner.
You can actually find the culprit through your FeedBurner dashboard – just compare the latest subscriber details with that of last week.
Mine has pretty much stayed the same. Tomorrow it will go down anyway as they always do at the weekend. We shall see how TC does!
I checked a couple of my blogs and sites, count remains quite the same with the change as much as doubled.
mine is still the same
#12 Amit – I agree with what you said and with the number of exclusives TC has, it could very well be one of them.
#10 – that’s interesting – bloglines you can trick
if feedburner is also responsible for pushing feeds to our readers then it has become slow too. Often I see posts getting delayed. I dont know whats the issue. Is it my google reader problem?
@Duncan: Some german bloggers including Robert Basic also report strange counting issues these days (even a longer time). Their problem seems to be related to a my yahoo counting bug. Unfortunately Feedburner doesn’t respond to support tasks lately. Seems like to google deal brought the chaos in there
The Techcrunch problem is caused by this: http://www.deea...Tessarolizr.htm
An italian “joke” (mmmm…. let’s call it “joke”, but is a stupid one) that exploit a FB bug to pimp the subscribers of any FB feed…
We’ve been seeing steady growth and yesterday’s growth was consistent with our trend.
I hope that congratulations are in order.
–Ray
This is the “bug”: http://read.mel...burner_bug.html
Tessorolizr is the exploit that uses that bug
Simple spoofing.
I was surprised first time, when my feedburner subscribers count got zero. But it happens periodically =) and I dont’ pay any attention to 20% fluctuations…
My friend had been telling me about how I’d have double the amount of readers and then when I’d go to check it’d be the same. So naturally I’d think he was CRAZY, he just sent me the link to prove his sanity. haha!
My count increased by 1.
My read count doubled as well. It jumped to two from one. Actually I lie, nobody reads my blog, probably because I don’t ever write anything on it.
A bug in FeedBurner? Never! :p
My count is up by 15 since yesterday. Bug or not, I’m happy.
bug or not, it must be grea to see for you 1.500.000 people read feeds
First time I’ve looked at them in a month. During that time they decreased by 1/2 over 2 days and then more than doubled over 2 days this week. That’s why I seldom look at them. They’re useless.
Please, read the comments #19 & 21!!!!
Read Tessarolizr (in english).
Our feed counts have been all over the map in the last few days as well
My subscribers have dropped by about 300 on what it was yesterday, But i only have about 1700 subscribers so it’s probably normal fluctuations and not a result of this bug.
Hiya..Even my stats have doubled.
I had one subscriber, and today I am shocked to see it doubled!
Well, the fact that someone like myself that is in Midland, Texas found TC and is now addicted may have caused the counter to rise. Midland, Texas worth 900,000 points Menlo Park worth 1 full point.
This really surprises me.. as nothing changed in my RSS it is the same just a couple of readers are added…
No change for us!
So congrats Techcrunch
The fluctuations are normal, and here is the reason: http://www.dail...t-fluctuations/
Such a big spike seems abnormal, though. I think it should get fixed naturally in a couple of days at most.
Definitely was a FeedBurner bug. Tomorrow’s numbers based on today’s data should be back earthward a bit to the existing trendline. Sorry for the excitement.
Don’t ask why. Take the 1.5 mil figure and shop the site ASAP. Just tell the acquiror you just implemented a successful “forward to a friend” campaign if they probe.
Bug!
wow, that is a significant increase in number of subscriber after China banning RSS feeds.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Must be via my personalized page on http://www.undiq.mobi/
Duncan said: …..”Given the number is up significantly from the 600,000 odd subscribers we had yesterday, I’m calling it a Feedburner bug.”
I say: Given the number is up significantly from the 600,000 odd subscribers we had yesterday, I’m taking this opportunity to lock in long term contracts with my advertisers. lol
600,000 subscribers is still pretty damn impressive.
advertisers don’t care about one’s feedburner reader count… hehehe… it’s pretty common (As has been exhausted in these comments) for feedburner to “lie” essentially. It’s not an accepted form of “hard stats” that advertisers want to see or pay a premium for. So let’s let those tired jokes start to whittle down now, eh? the bug has been plenty explained… enough so to mandate an update to the post i would say.
@ duncan: you yourself said it was all but certainly a bug, so how about an update to the post now that you know what caused it (or at least have a window into the vulnerability)… people have a hard time reading all the comments to find the real story, and as much as i loathe updates to blog posts this one is in order.
It’s not so difficult to understand: it is an exploit.
Try to read Tessarolizr.
Or maybe it just caught up to all the past subscribers it hadn’t added yet.
600,000 is pretty good only last year when I subscribed it was around 61,000 subscribers.
Guys read the comments before adding more speculations!
This behavior is caused by exploiting a Feedburner feature described moth ago here: http://read.mel...burner_bug.html.
Last week a bunch of italian bloggers created a funny, simple web application to attract the attention to a wider audience on this problem. This application is desribed here in enligsh: http://www.deea...izr-in-english/.
If everyone can increase the number of suscribers as easy as shown there, can we really trust this numbers? Are we really sure anyone used this exploit before?
I think Feedburner should deliver an official statement about this!
.. take a look: http://www.deea...Tessarolizr.htm