Here's a simple text replacement trick to find the number of people that have subscribed to any XML feed that's powered by Feedburner provided the feed publisher has enabled FeedCount.
Feeds on Feedburner have an address like feeds.feedburner.com/labnol. All you now need to do is prefix the feed name (labnol in this case) with ~fc/ so that the new URL looks like feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/labnol
You're done. Just click on the new URL to see the count of RSS subscribers. It points to an graphic image (in GIF format) which you can also embed in your webpages as you see below:
Shoemoney
As on today, TechCrunch has 65K subscribers while BoingBoing has 1401K subscribers. You don't see the circulation statistics for ShoeMoney and PostSecret as they have not enabled FeedCount Chicklets in their Feedburner Publicize channel.
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/06/feedburner-hack-find-number-of-feed.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Hey there,
Yep, this is a standard FeedBurner address for the FeedCount chicklet, and as you point out, we only display this image for feeds that have explicitly activated the FeedCount service. It is inactive by default in any feed you create on our system.
If you're a FeedBurner publisher and you don't want these numbers displayed, just make sure FeedCount is inactive. Sign in to your account, click your feed's title on My Feeds, and then head to the Publicize tab. FeedCount's on/off status is indicated by a checkmark next to its listing on that tab, and clicking this listing will allow you to modify its status and appearance.
Written on 2/6/06 7:32 PM
Intresting bit of information Amit.
You know this whole blog/feeds thing reminds me of the sales funnel analogy...it is all a game of numbers in sales.
I often wonder how legit these feed numbers are and if people read all the blogs they subscribe to everyday. Recently Tech Crunch had an article on similar lines and basically said that he could write on any subject, say politics, and still have his blog listed as one of the top-ranking ones.
To increase your feed subscription it is best to be an aggregator, and not create content...What do you think?
Kamla
Written on 3/6/06 12:58 PM