UPDATED! Scroll down for more news!
Yesterday Feedburner counted close to 30000 Subscribers to our RSS feed. That number included all our FriendFeed subscribers.
Today, those subscribers seems to have been excluded and Feedburner counts a little more than 11000 RSS subscribers.
There are two possibilities that could have caused this.
1: There is a bug in Feedburner or Friendfeed
2: Feedburner has stopped counting Friendfeed subscribers
Although we are hoping that this is a simple bug (there have been problems before) we are going to be all paranoid about it and assume the worst.
You see, that second option has something going for it too. Doing a search at Twitter for “Friendfeed+Feedburner” right now shows that a lot of people assume that Google simply pulled the plug from Friendfeed.
Yes, in case you missed that one, Google owns Feedburner. But why would they pull the plug?
Well, there has been a fair amount of animosity between Facebook and Google in the past as illustrated in this detailed and entertaining Wired Magazine story. Could it be that now that Facebook has acquired Friendfeed that Google has decided to severe all ties with it?
I think it would be a huge faux pas on Google’s part if they did that and wouldn’t rhyme well with their ‘Don’t do evil’ mantra. But stranger things have happened so we will ask around and report back to you when we have more details.
Until then, we are going to assume it is just a temporary hiccup over at Feedburner.
Oh, the title of this post was taken from a tweet by @ TheMarketingGuy who complained about this issue earlier.
UPDATED: Feedburner has posted a message on their blog explaining that there is indeed an error at Friendfeed. They ARE talking to Friendfeed about it. The message in full:
Issue: We are working with FriendFeed to determine why subscriber totals from this service are not available in the most recent daily subscriber counts reported for FeedBurner feeds. We will update this post with any status changes and resolution.
You see? Nothing is wrong there is just something wrong. Or, as one of our comments said: it is just “normal buggy behavior”.
confirmed here, I don’t see FriendFeed anywhere in my Feedburner account today! I had 20+ subscribers onlt from FriendFeed yesterday and today none!
i hope it´s a simple bug. i can´t find a reason why feedburner should not count friendfeed subscribers any more!
Do you already have the real answer?
the correct answer is: who gives a shit.
Mmm.. Paranoïa would be irrational : Why ban an RSS agregator on a RSS counter tool?
This would defect on Google because mean that Google goes over its user service primary goal. And that people using Feedburner can never again trust this service… that mean loosing millions of them.
Maybe a bad redirect to xml can be the real answer, just check tomorrow ;-)
I like sometime paranoïa & conspiration theories, look at this one : Twitter would block Friendfeed fetch service to exclude FF/FB to value the tweets …
Well in my case Feedburner website is not opening. I try to search on twitter about this but find nothing and fount this post tweet. Dam tweeter is fast then Google Reader
@angry blogger: Boy i like you!
@Patrice Albertus:
Nice theory, i hope you right and as you say i´ll check tomorrow.
I would rather Google not include FriendFeed because normal subscribers are much more engaged that passive FriendFeed subscribers
It happens to me every once in a while. Nothing to worry about I guess, since it is normal buggy behaviour.
I like how you try to emphasize how you’re giving the benefit of the doubt, yet you go to press with a headline that says otherwise. Oh, sure, you clear it up.. at the end of the post which you got me to read by way of a sensational title.
I just shake my head. :\
A title that was clearly encapsulated with double quotes. A clear hint that this was a quote and not a fact.
But okay, sorry it misled you. I will take more care choosing my titles from now on.
It seems to be an unknown bug and Google and FriendFeed are working on it together to find out why this happened. See Feedburner Status Blog: http://feedburnerstatus.blogspot.com/2009/09/friendfeed-subscriber-totals-not.html
I sure hope this is just a bug because I really liked seeing my subscriber base at high levels like everyone else did. I’m going to assume the worst as well and that Google ended their relationship with FriendFeed. Honestly, my only reason for linking Twitter with FriendFeed was to increase the readership to my blog. I hope it’s a bug otherwise FriendFeed goes back to not offering anything unique (in my opinion).
everything´s fine again!
Best comment ever. Really made me think. Thanks for taking the time to share this with us.
Well, if you’d like to be paranoid and conspiratorial, what does the fact that FeedBurner won’t accept Twitter feeds mean?