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I got up this morning to find a big surprise on FreshBlogger. I’m used to seeing the Feedburner subscriber count chicklet showing around 180 or so subscribers every day. This normally fluctuates a little bit from day to day, as is normal according to the Feedburner people. The trend has been generally upward on a gradual basis and I’ve been pleased to watch my readership grow.

Then this morning I take a look at it and see this:
Feedburner and Outlook 2007

Here’s a close up of the chicklet:
Feedburner and Outlook 2007

My first impression, was “wow, this can’t be for real.” But, then again, I have been getting a lot of love letters from “I am a pretty girl in Russia” named Mary or JoJo. Funny how gmail puts them in my junk mailbox. Anyway, I’ve heard of similar things happening to other bloggers recently, so I wanted to do a little digging to find out what was causing this.

Here’s what I found when I went to Feedburner’s site and logged into my account:
Feedburner and Outlook 2007

Interesting. Then I saw that there was a little tiny exclamation point beside the entry for Outlook 2007. When I clicked on Outlook 2007 to get a more detail on my subscribers, here’s what showed up:
Feedburner and Outlook 2007

Finally, we get the cold, hard truth, the dirty little secret of Feedburner and Outlook 2007. “This number may be inflated, since some requests from Internet Explorer 7 also identify themselves the same as Outlook 2007.” So what does this mean?

Does it mean that there are now 588 more subscribers who are using either Internet Explorer 7 or Outlook 2007? I find this hard to believe. That’s just too big of a jump overnight.

I haven’t seen any other bloggers posting on this, yet, so I’ll have to wait and see what’s going on. If you have any information on this or have seen any other official explanation, please leave a comment.

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12 Responses to “Feedburner Is Going Crazy Or I’m Just Damn Popular”

  1. 1 Jean

    I think since the new Google toolbar came out for the new Outlook and the fact that your favicon is on the google toolbar may have something to do with it. I still can’t figure our why you have no page rank, but hey…if you;re making money does it matter?

    Jean

  2. 2 Wendy Piersall :: eMom

    Whhhaaaaaatt?

    My subscriber count went up 5 since yesterday.

    And I actually have no Outlook subscribers at all. I’d head over to the FeedBurner forums. They monitor them constantly and will usually get back to you in just a couple of hours.

    If you are indeed up to that many subscribers, I’m SOOOOOOOOOOOOO jealous!

  3. 3 Adnan

    Bloody hell!!! KK you definitely have to frame that one Ray! Im joining the “Im so jealous of Ray” club along with Wendy!

  4. 4 Jake Parrillo

    Hey Ray,

    It’s understandable that you’re interested in the big jump that your feed subscribership made. This things happen from time to time. We’ve written about it here:

    http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/02/the_numbers_they_go_down_they.php

    Things should straighten themselves out. Please feel free to give me a shout if you have further questions.

    Thanks!

    Jake Parrillo
    Publisher Services Team
    FeedBurner

  5. 5 ray

    Hi Jean, that makes sense. It has to have something to do with it. As far as pagerank goes, it’s strange that it’s not showing up sometimes. I still see PR of 0 from home, but I’ve verified that freshblogger.com is actually PR 5 (www.freshblogger.com is PR 3) and it shows up like that for me at other computers (like, at work). Thanks for commenting!

  6. 6 ray

    Wendy and Adnan: Haha! Just kidding. You guys are big time compared to a little fish like me. And Wendy, you are so right about FeedBurner being on top of it!

    Jake, thanks for stopping by and giving the link. I’ve seen a bit of fluctuation, but never by this much. I’m not too worried about the big number right now, but I thought it would be best to post about it so that my visitors won’t think I’m trying to pull a fast one somehow.

    I know there was a recent controversy about something like this that caused some bloggers to lose credibility. I’m confident you guys have things well in hand and if the numbers turn out to be accurate, then I’m happy. Thanks again for visiting and helping to clear things up a bit.

  7. 7 Wendy Piersall :: eMom

    Ray, the FeedBurner team is the s*it. I “sneeze” for them every chance I get!

    I can’t wait to see how your numbers change over the next week or so. I’ll be taking a few more lessons from you, my friend! ;)

  8. 8 ray

    Wendy, I have to say I’m really impressed by FeedBurner’s products and services and also now their staff. Oh, and the number is 752 today! It’ll be cool if it does prove to be lasting.

    I keep thinking about Jean’s comment about the Google Toolbar button. I saw this new feature listed on Google’s site several months ago and made up a favicon button for the toolbar following their instructions and submitted it to their gallery. I can only assume that a number of visitors have found FreshBlogger that way…

  9. 9 Donna

    Ray,

    I just wanted to let you know that the Google Toolbar button was the way that I initially located your site. I’m new to blogging and I am following several sites, as well as creating my own as part of a project in a Research and Technology class that I am attending. I located your site through the toolbar, but, of course, stayed for the content! Keep up the quality work!

    Donna

  10. 10 ray

    Hi Donna, thanks for your kind words. I’m glad that button is drawing in some readers and even more happy that you’re finding my blog useful. I’ve been checking out your blog and finding some interesting information there, too. Thanks for visiting and taking time to comment!

  1. 1 FeedBurner Chicklet Blog Meme at FreshBlogger
  2. 2 FeedBurner Subscribers Breaks 1000 at FreshBlogger

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