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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google

How many Google Reader users subscribe to our feed (or yours)?

Google Reader subscribersThere's a neat little trick that lets you see how many people are subscribing to a site's RSS feed in Google Reader.

All you have to do is fire up Google Reader, click the "Add Subscription" button and type a web site name or keyword. Google Reader will spit out a list of blogs and news sites along with the number of users who have subscribed to that site using Google Reader.

These numbers are only kind of useful. After all, Google Reader is just one of hundreds of RSS readers. And only a small percentage of web users actually subscribe to RSS feeds. But Google Reader is probably one of the more popular readers out there, and this data provides yet another way for people to argue about which web sites are more popular than others.

For the record, Download Squad has over 9,000 subscribers according to Google Reader. This represents a fraction (although not an insignificant one) of the overall number of people who subscribe to our RSS feed. But then, since we're a technology-oriented blog, a higher percentage of our audience knows about and uses RSS feeds than audiences for many other sites.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Social Software

Google Reader now reports feed subscriber numbers, offers Publisher Tips page

Google Reader now reports feed subscriber numbers, offers Publisher Tips page

For a long time now, Google Reader has sat in the camp with other online RSS clients who unfortunately don't (or more correctly: couldn't) report the number of readers subscribed to a feed. This of course can frustrate publishers, as they only see one collective hit from Google Reader instead of an actual number of their readers using that client.

As of this morning, however, the Official Google Reader Blog has changed all of that. In fact, the gReader team has not only enabled their crawler to report an actual number of feed subscribers, that number also includes users who are simply subscribed to a feed via Google Homepage.

Not content to stop at mere numbers, the Google Reader team have also created a Tips for Publishers page that offers ideas for best practices, feed implementation, feed "auto-discovery" and even a few catches to look out for.

It might not have been the much-requested search update that gReader users are salivating for, but these new features should certainly put a smile on most publishers' faces.

Filed under: Audio, Business, Internet, News, Windows, Web services

Napster considers selling itself

Napster considers selling itself

It appears that Napster might be ready to say uncle, ZDNet is reporting. The company has stated they "do not have our heads in the sand regarding an M&A (merger and acquisition) transaction", which is more or less a nice way of saying they just might be licked. Over the march quarter their 512,000 strong subscriber base fell 7 percent as they transitioned to its free website model, but excluding 4,000 university subscriptions, their number of paid subscribers actually grew 26 percent year-over-year.

An analyst from Stifel Nicolaus & Co also cited in ZDNet's article said "Napster's still trying to find a working business model, which is bad from an operating standpoint", also noting that they see an increased likelihood that the company would sell, especially since the possibility came straight down from management.

Either way, things don't sound so good for the renegade-come-legit digital music service. Also of note is their website; it might be the fact that I'm on a Mac, but their site seems dishearteningly bare these days. not even a remnant of the hip Flash site they built when they offered the web-based free model. I guess time will tell what happens to the music libraries of all those subscribing users.

[via iLounge]

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