Having used Feedburner in conjunction with Google Analytics it is quite worrying to see that whilst Analytics provides an accurate reflection of site usage, Feedburner can be manipulated in such a way.

I will be interested to see other users comments regarding this and how they feel Google will progress with its development. Clearly there is a serious issue here that needs to be addressed, as having the raw data manipulated in such ways leads to a variety of serious implications.

Louis Gray is probably the only one I know who (last I heard) definitely reads everything in his reader. Some of us rely more on CommentLuv these days to make sure we don’t miss anything important than we use our custom AllTop page, readers or FriendFeed. Why is explained in the post I’ve linked to this comment.

@gail – Agreed on those filtering options – too bad that RSS readers like Google Reader don’t just build in “modes” that let you flip between different feed banks. Interesting idea.

@kristi and @gail – here’s the thing. There is nothing wrong with FriendFeed numbers TAKEN FOR WHAT THEY ARE. But as soon as Google imports the feed counts and displays them as “Readers” in a blog chicklet with the “feedburner” brand attached, I get all grumpy about it.

I appreciate your comments a lot.

I still choose to use FriendFeed when I want to read the latest content written by bloggers I am particularly interested in. I do this because you can filter your RSS subscriptions at FriendFeed using lists.

In other words, you could have one list of all your must-read blogs and others for each niche you are involved in. If you have several blogs or a business plus outside interests this lets you focus on finding only what you want to read in that moment.

You can also click on the RSS feed buttons in each FriendFeed user’s profile to read the content from each specific feed. We all know bloggers with multiple blogs where we always read one of them, sometimes read another and never read the rest. FriendFeed makes it easy to do that quickly.

I agree that trackbacks / pingbacks, RTs, comments and blogger interaction are much better measurements of a blogger’s influence. I really like PostRank and expect it to continue to be very important; however, sometimes the posts with high numbers are less deserving than others with lower ratings.

FriendFeed is importing your RSS feed which is then displayed to your FriendFeed subscribers, so technically FriendFeed subscribers are just as exposed to your feed as a subscriber in Google Reader, who can just as easily have so many feeds that they are missing your posts anyway.

Your real engagement measurement is certainly more accurate, and should be more important to serious bloggers. But in truth, anyone who is looking to make money off of their website from advertising needs to have those other stats – subscribers, hits, followers, etc. It really depends on the blogger’s goals as to what is going to be more important.