Subscriber Stats, Summed Up

There's been a lot of discussion this weekend about the subscriber counts that have recently appeared in Reader's search results. Leaderboards have been drawn up, numbers are being compared and in some cases there's confusion as to how these numbers compare with other subscriber metrics. Additionally, we've made changes (some as recently as today) as to how counts are being calculated. This is probably going to be pretty boring unless you're a feed publisher, but we thought it would be best to explain things a bit. Here are the various numbers you may come across, and what they all mean:

Google subscriber counts: These numbers include subscribers across all Google services, including Reader, iGoogle, and Orkut. You can see them in Reader's feed search results (pictured below) and the Google Webmaster Tools. Additionally, our crawler reports them to the publisher each time we fetch the feed. Reader's feed search was recently showing stale and incomplete data, but as of today (October 15) the numbers should be the same everywhere.

FeedBurner numbers: If you use FeedBurner to manage and track your feed, you will see a subscriber count there that is attributed to "Google Feedfetcher." This number is a sum of all the feeds that you have redirecting to your FeedBurner feed URL. So if http://www.example.com/atom.xml has 3 subscribers, http://www.example.com/rss.xml has 7 subscribers and http://feeds.feedburner.com/Example (where you redirect the other two feeds now) has 12 subscribers, then you will see 3 + 7 + 12 = 22 subscribers reported in the FeedBurner interface.

What this all means if you're a feed publisher is that if you're interested in getting the most comprehensive overview of your subscribers, you should be using a service like FeedBurner or Google Webmaster Tools. On the other hand, if you're a Reader user, we hope you take advantage of the numbers that we now show next to search results, so that you can pick the most appropriate feed to subscribe to.

Official Google Reader Blog: Subscriber Stats, Summed Up

read more...

Breaking up isn't hard to do

Dear "Labs",

We don't know how to tell you this, but it's time that we break up. It's just that we're different now. People can search. They can share what they read. They can even see trends about what they read, and how often they do it. There are all sorts of things we could do in the future to make feed reading awesome. And that means you just can't be around anymore.

But don't be sad. We'll always remember the good times: our first date, when we rolled out the new user-interface together, and the way sometimes we could just sit there and not talk at all because you are just a label.

When we get all teary-eyed and reminiscent we might even put on that mix tape you made us; the one with Paula Cole and Guster. We'll think of you.

Today is a big day for us. We learned to speak some new languages. And frankly, you don't translate well. But we both speak English, and we know that "u" and "I" are far apart in the alphabet. We're farther in real life.

Official Google Reader Blog: Breaking up isn't hard to do

read more...

Now you can feed your television

Earlier this year, I acquired a Nintendo Wii. As I was recovering from Wii elbow, I began to explore the capabilities of the Opera-based Internet Channel. It occurred that Reader may be a lot of fun on the Wii, especially with many photo and video feeds.

Some weekend hacking confirmed my suspicions, and the rest of the team also seemed to think it'd be a neat side project. As some have discovered, we recently flipped the switch on this feature. If you'd like to try it out, simply visit reader.google.com on your Wii (you may find it even easier to just do a Google search for "reader"). Keep in mind that this is something very experimental, the labs of Google Labs if you will.

If you're curious to see what it looks like, here's a recording:

You'll also notice that Reader on the Wii takes advantage of the famous Wiimote:

• up/down: scroll up/down
• right/left: next/previous item
• 1 button: show subscriptions
• 2 button: show links

When showing subscriptions:

• up/down: previous/next subscription
• right: select current subscription
• left: close
• -/+: collapse/expand folder

If you'd like to try the Reader interface in a regular browser, visit www.google.com/reader/wii to go into Wii mode. The Wiimote buttons all have keyboard equivalents (e.g. the "1" key for the 1 button).

Now that this is done, I've heard that the Commodore 64 has a web browser...

Official Google Reader Blog: Feed Your Television

read more...

Templates Are a Good!

As an engineer on Google Reader, it's always great to hear from users, especially when it's about how Reader has helped out. I was very happy when the team received this email from Gary Patino:

I was having a hard time finding the right job here in Houston. Days would go by without talking to a single recruiter. But then I started using Google Reader to subscribe to custom-made job search feeds for craigslist, and for oodle.com (which already aggregates feeds from thousands of other classified ad websites).

Official Google Reader Blog: There's a feed for that?!

read more...

Google Reader for iPhone and iPod Touch

Mobile web browsers have come a long way since we first introduced an XHTML version of Reader back in 2006. For example, iPhone and iPod Touch owners know how powerful having a full-featured browser is. We on the Reader team are heavy mobile Safari users. Sometimes we use it to kill time, other times for answering important questions that come up during brunch: What is Tyrol's first name? How is maple butter made? How do you sweeten rhubarb for sangria? What is John Gruber saying now? For questions like the last one, we of course use Reader to keep up with our subscriptions.

Official Google Reader Blog: Brand new Google Reader for iPhone

read more...