Feedburner Subscribers Pumped Up by Rojo?

November 14, 2006

Ouch. Just like Marshall Kirkpatrick said here. I had but two subscribers to my blog seven months ago. But that was when I wasn't serious about blogging. Fast-forward to present: I now have 2800 subscribers. Looking at my Feedburner stats, most of my supposed subscribers come from feed aggregator Rojo. I have reported this concern to the Feedburner crew, and they replied with this (not verbatim):

Your stats are as accurate as the data that is reported to us by the large aggregators. Sometimes some of these aggregators (like Rojo) start sending us bad subscriber data, which can cause fluctuations in your subscriber numbers.

True enough, I checked my RSS page on Rojo, and it does appear that more than 2000 are subscribed to it. Even Jason Calacanis was surprised by the numbers Rojo is raking in. Subscribers to two other blogs I maintain are also on the rise, and guess where the bulk is coming from? Rojo. Add that Rojo chicklet to your site fast, and, traffic permit, see your readers zoom.

4 archived comments

Comments are preserved from the original blog and are now closed.

Ajay D'SouzaNov 14, 2006
But are these actual subscribers or is this just incorrectly being reported by Rojo?
AndrewNov 15, 2006
Ajay, you can check the number of subscribers to your feed if it's already in Rojo. I checked mine, and the numbers were indeed correct.
adeNov 27, 2006
Yeah, Rojo is sending incorrect data. I have 100+ subscribers (but it fluctuates every now and then).
GeektronicaDec 6, 2006
That does seem very high. Rojo is getting a lot more popular, but I doubt <em>any</em> blog has 2800 Rojo readers - I don't even know if they have that many users. BoingBoing only has 131 subs on Rojo at the moment, and while TechCrunch shows 8993 one page, it shows very few elsewhere (for example here: http://www.rojo.com/feed/Tda5eXxggQd6MgHq?m=1 - see "Feed Info"). I think their metrics are off.