Tag Archives: google reader

Open Letter To Google Reader Team On The Future Of RSS

By Andy Beard | Published: May 1, 2008

Today is RSS Awareness Day, and as a solid 40% of my RSS subscribers use Google Reader, I thought I would take this opportunity to reach out to the Google Reader team. I am someone who loves using RSS, but at the same time as a business owner I find RSS is not living up to its current billing. Whilst I haven't mentioned RSS day before on this blog, I have known about Daniel's plans for a month, and I might have been the first one to suggest using a dedicated site to promote RSS Day. This avoids what might be looked on as purely an attempt at linkbait.

Posted in Google, blogging tips, marketing, news | Also tagged goog, Google, rss, rss-day, rssday, rss_authentication | Comments closed

Exclusive: How To Get OPML For Google Reader

By Andy Beard | Published: November 8, 2007

This isn't a typical "how To" article, because currently this feature doesn't exist, but it could with just a little 20% time at Google.

Whilst you can download an OPML file to import into other feed readers, or to upload to the web in another location, you can't currently access it directly.

Whilst many tech sites are lauding the new blogroll for Google Reader users, it isn't really very useful, and is without doubt extremely ugly compared to many widgets that use OPML, such as SpringWidgets, or even a work-around previously available.

The Key To OPML

Posted in Google, blogging tips, web 2.0 | Also tagged blogrolls, goog, Google, opml, rss, rss_subscriptions | Comments closed

The Secret Statistics In Split RSS Feeds – Google Reader

By Andy Beard | Published: October 15, 2007

Google Reader now reports feed usage, and it is being suggested by a prominent Google engineer that you should look at aggregated numbers. Danny has gone into what many of the numbers mean, but he is missing out on some vital clues that are extremely revealing.

First up, for those counting stats such as Darren Rowse, Robert Scoble and Techcrunch here are my numbers.

Google Reader is currently showing 3 different feeds that are all providing the same content, which you might think would be better served as a single number as appears in Feedburner. Hopefully that will never

Posted in Google, blogging tips, stats, web 2.0 | Also tagged blog_subscribers, feedburner, rss, rss_subscribers, rss_subscription, rss_syndication, subscription | Comments closed

Open Social Web – Google + Feedburner Really Is Bad For RSS

By Andy Beard | Published: September 5, 2007

I honestly laughed when I saw the new "Open Social Web" Bill of Rights launched yesterday, not because it isn't to some extent a useful idea, but because of one specific term…

Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others

10 months ago I fired off a heated debate about RSS sharing, and how Google with it's easy to share feeds could be killing the future of RSS. Now I say I fired it off, but honestly it would have been a storm in a teacup without Robert Scoble taking part with one of his most

Posted in Google, blogging tips, marketing, news, web 2.0 | Also tagged bill_of_rights, facebook, feedburner, Google, news, open_social_web, robert_scoble, rss, techcrunch | Comments closed

Techcrunch RSS Subscriber Payola?

By Andy Beard | Published: June 8, 2007

Maybe I should enter these lyrics into the SEO Lyrics contest

Payola makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around
Payola makes the world go around
It makes the world go ’round.

Posted in blog monetization, blogging tips, web 2.0 | Also tagged disclosure, payola, rss, RSS Reader, rss_subscribers, rss_subscription, techcrunch | Comments closed

Compete Toolbar Bug With Google Reader – Compete vs Alexa vs Quantcast Stats

By Andy Beard | Published: February 19, 2007

I have had long term problems with the Compete Toolbar as I pointed out some time ago on my friend Paul’s blog, I think I actually made that comment on my first visit to his blog.

Posted in stats | Also tagged alexa, compete, firefox, quantcast, statistics, stats, toolbar | Comments closed

Google Reader | FeedBurner Stats Show Significant Market Share – Google Reader Now #1?

By Andy Beard | Published: February 17, 2007

Until yesterday, the only statistics available for the Google Reader user base was based upon site traffic, and to a lesser extent click-throughs from Google Reader (although that data doesn’t tell you from whose feed currently).

Posted in Google, web 2.0 | Also tagged b5media, darren_rouse, feedburner, feed_reader, Google, Jeremy_wright, mashable, news, problogger, rss, RSS Reader, statistics, techcrunch, techmeme | Comments closed

Google Reader News and When Will Google Create a Social Network?

By Andy Beard | Published: February 16, 2007

Google Reader is one of the easiest to use RSS Readers currently available. The code is fairly light, thus allowing you to skim read 100s of RSS articles quickly. One of its many failings however, which I have pointed out previously was the lack of reporting subscriber counts to Feedburner.

Posted in Google, web 2.0 | Also tagged adsense, adwords, analytics, gmail, Google, google_coop, google_cse, google_custom_search, google_groups, google_personal_search, google_talk, google_video, personal_home_page, picassa, youtube | Comments closed

Google Reader Stats With FeedBurner

By Andy Beard | Published: January 19, 2007

It is nice to finally see one of the mainstream blogs pointing out that it is hard to track readership numbers from Google Reader. Techcrunch have been looking at a report from Hitwise

Posted in Google, stats | Also tagged analytics, feedburner, Google, rss, statistics | Comments closed

My Google Reader Stats

By Andy Beard | Published: January 4, 2007

It looks like Matt Cutts is starting a new meme with his review of the new Google Reader Stats page.

To pre-empt any tags, here are mine.

But it should be noted

Google Reader Stats | Statistics

By Andy Beard | Published: January 4, 2007

The Google Reader Team have announced the availability of readership stats. You mean you can actually see how many readers you have using Google Reader? Nope, don’t be silly – what we get to see is how much time we are spending reading other people’s feeds. I am highly disappointed.

Posted in Google, web 2.0 | Also tagged feedburner, Google, google_reader_stats, stats | Comments closed

Headline Formatting In Blogs

By Andy Beard | Published: December 9, 2006

When most people write content, they think about how that content looks in their WYSIWYG editor, and probably in their preview of page contents.
I am sure after publishing, they take a look at their published version of the content.

Posted in blogging tips, marketing | Also tagged blogging, blogging tips, bloglines, email, feedburner, feedreader, feed_reader, googlereader, h2, h3, headings, headlines, html, marketing, pageflakes, rss | Comments closed

Google are killing the future of RSS

By Andy Beard | Published: November 3, 2006

An RSS feed which you subscribe to is your personal subscription to a service, just like email.

A private subscription service for text, audio and video content, even involving a paid subscription fee has been possible for more than a year, based upon RSS.

Posted in Google, Uncategorized, web 2.0 | Also tagged aweber, email marketing, email_delivery, exclusive_content, feedmagic, feed_magic, getresponse, Google, linkblogs, link_blogs, mailing_list, paid_subscription, podcast, podtech, robert_scoble, rss, RSS Reader, rssemail, rss_email, rss_syndication, scobleizer, spam_blog, splog, splogger, tech, web 2.0, web2.0, windows_vista | Comments closed

Google Reader, Splogs, Linkblogs, Blog Readership

By Andy Beard | Published: October 19, 2006

But the Google reader has major flaws, which noone is really talking about. In fact I have noticed a growing tendancy for reporting thee flaws as a cool feature, without any emphasis on the negative aspects of using these "featues".

Posted in Google, niche website, web 2.0 | Also tagged antileech, Google, linkblogs, link_blogs, msn, niche website, niche_websites, robert_scoble, rss, RSS Reader, rss_syndication, scobleizer, search engines, spam_blog, splog, splogger, wordpress, wordpress plugins, yahoo | Comments closed