Comments on: WTG? What the Google is Going On?

By: Christy Tucker

Christy Tucker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:32:02 +0000

OK, I know you’re stretching the numbers a bit. (Quite a bit, as I see about 950 in Google Reader for you, and I’m sure you have more elsewhere.) But I’ve had people seriously make the argument that Twitter is a requirement for all bloggers because “whether we like it or not a large portion of our audience now reads links to post from Twitter and don’t use Feed readers.” I was curious whether you were seeing that kind of shift. But, clearly it isn’t a big deal to you either way–you’re learning by blogging and using a reader, so you’ll keep doing what works for you. :)

By: Alan Levine aka CogDog

Alan Levine aka CogDog — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:34:15 +0000

Christy, you missed the big invisible smiley ;-) I make stuff up, don’t you see?

To be honest I dont’s spend much time in nmy stats, so I don’t know who the 6 people are who read my blog.

There, I did it again, see?

There are actually 9 people who read the blog.

By: Christy Tucker

Christy Tucker — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:09:30 +0000

I know this is tangential to the main point of your post, but you made me curious. I’ve heard the arguments that no one is using feed readers anymore and everyone reads blogs through Twitter links, but I have to say that I’m not really seeing it in my own subscriptions. Are you seeing a decrease in your feed reader subscriptions that makes you feel like you’re one of a handful of holdouts? Is Twitter a bigger referral source than Google Reader for your blog?

I don’t doubt that there are people who are reading that way, but a significant chunk of my readers still subscribe via email. They haven’t even moved to RSS yet, let alone to something like Twitter. I guess I really don’t think using a reader makes us throwbacks.

By: Andre Malan

Andre Malan — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:34:46 +0000

I often wonder how much coordination goes on in that back end of Google. Is the Reader team adding all this stuff because they just want cool new features, or is it actually part of a master “wave to take over the world” plan? Also, if there is a plan, how come it hasn’t been exposed yet? Apple locks its engineers away in dungeons and executes family members and their plans still get out in the open. Why does nobody know what Google is going to do?

Maybe it is all just preparation for Chrome OS… but I guess we have to wait and see.