People don’t unsubscribe from RSS feeds, I’ve found

by on November 27, 2005

My old feed on Bloglines has 9,204 subscribers.
My new feed on Bloglines has 1,457 subscribers.

That tells me that people aren’t unsubscribing from old feeds and are just leaving them in place. It also tells me that Bloglines has a lot of “dead users.” (Users who aren’t using the service much, if at all).

By the way, it’s amazing how many dead feeds are out there. I deleted probably 200 dead feeds. Almost done.

  • But will you still come visit us riff-raff if we include "SCOBLE" in uppercase letters in occasional blog posts? :D
  • clay whittaker
    I'm subscribed to both, though I'm not a dead user. Only new posts filter through (since I set bloglines only to show feeds which are updated) hence there's no point in deleting dead feeds.
  • I don't have time to mantain or organize my feeds. I would be grateful if tools did if for me.
  • Adam, look at my feed list. You'll see a few ego searches in there. :-)
  • Another reason is that many aggregators don't handle HTTP redirects correctly so even if you set up your old blog to point to your new one, they will keep on pinging the old one. Also, check out http://www.blogbridge.com/archives/2005/07/anot... - BlogBridge actually has a tool to let you clean up feeds in your aggregator based on how often you've looked at it, how often it's been updated and a few other handy dandy factors. There are indeed a lot of people polling blogs which they never look at!
  • Scoble, I don't think it's that the users aren't using the service, although I'm sure there are many. The main reason we don't unsub is because there's no end-user benefit in doing this.
  • My problem is in Bloglines it is too hard to clean up old feeds. It is easier just to leave them in there. Once they give me a nice and fast interface to administering my feeds, I will clean up my feeds.
  • I just posted before that you are still subsribed to my feed which is long dead. Do update to the new one :).
  • I subscribe and unsubscribe all the time, Robert.
  • I noticed on your OPML that you're subscribed to "You've been HAACKED"'s old and new feed.
  • Oops - the HAACKED duplicate is deleted in your new OPML.
  • Christopher Coulter
    Hahah, why is this all such a grand revelation? The light bulb finally turning on? I noticed this what 3-4 years ago? Burnt at the stake at the time for dare suggesting it, if you recall. Feed maintenece is a royal pain. Users have stone-age tools, and you want to fire webmasters that don't use feeds?
  • Yeah, I still have your old link blog in my Bloglines, if only in case you start using it again. It doesn't make me a dead user (not by far), just one wary to unsubscribe, for fear of missing something.
  • can you do a redirect on your old feedto your new one?

    -- B
  • Bryan, unfortuntely, no, sorry.
  • Miles Archer
    You gave no way of knowing that you moved. It's like you dropped off the face of the earth. I found the new site via a post from one of your cronies.
  • I'm definitely guilty sometimes of being one of those "dead users." What I love so much about web feeds, though, is that I can simply subscribe to one and then never have to worry about visiting the site again. I have lots of friends, for example, who may only update their personal blogs once a month or so; I love that I can now just subscribe to their feed and get that once-a-month update automatically, versus checking the site every single day and saying to myself, "When are they going to update this d**m blog!?" If this makes me a dead user, then I guess I don't really mind being one.
  • just
    I haven't unsubscribed for example. There are just 3-4 posts that I have marked 'saved' in bloglines. I haven't had time to read or write about these thoughts.

    Sidenote. It took me a week to notice that S. has moved to new blog. Hmm. Damn bloglines.
  • You need to provide feed redirects. Bloglines handles feed redirects very well and you won't see "dead users" (I think your assumption is flawed but thats a different discussion altogether). Redirect is very easy and the technology is available so just use it instead of having hundreds of users manually subscribe to your new feed.
  • over 18,000 still subscribed in NewsGator...
  • I scraped bloglines for NewsGator.
  • hmm well if you ask me, a proper move should include HTTP redirects ("Moved permanently -- 301") from the old site to the new, so that anybody with an RSS subscription or a bookmark doesn't even notice -- they just get bumped over to the new site.
  • Chris C
    Since I only have Bloglines show updated feeds, the inactive onces are invisible. Besides, I'm the user/customer: why should I have to constantly update my system just because you had some crazy whim to break what was working!

    That's especially true with businesses and marketing feeds. If you want to change something, fine. Just don't break my feed link b/c unless your proudct is _very_ important to me I'm not going to work to keep up with you.
  • Use Feedburner - but unfortunately wordpress.com does not handle Feedburner in its autodiscovery.
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