I completely agree with you that it would be great to somehow ID subscribers – I’ve been thinking the same thing. This would be a great feature for Feedburner to add!

I completely agree with you that it would be great to somehow ID subscribers – I’ve been thinking the same thing. This would be a great feature for Feedburner to add!

Well, I know that at least one member of the feedburner team is a regular reader. Let’s see if he has anything to say…

Well, I know that at least one member of the feedburner team is a regular reader. Let’s see if he has anything to say…

That’s my cue! Hi Matt, I am both the Eric of VentureWeek (yup, small world! – thank you again for your generous support) and the regular reader of Disruptive Thoughts Fraser is talking about. I too like the idea of some sort of automatic notification of subscription. It would create a bit more community around the feed. Right now we can’t tell which of your subscriber base is new, which is the same and who left. This has to do with the way feeds work. There is no way cookie users within a feed and using IP addresses for identification is not accurate (since all of us are on a work IP and home IP during the day and the occasional s’bucks, etc.). I wonder how many publishers out there would like this service. This is something we should figure out. My only concern would be the subscribers privacy. I think a lot of people enjoy feeds since they are anonymous (not mention they a better way to consume content). You don’t need to give up your e-mail address or anything personal making the feed completely spam free. However, this could be remedied by someone like us creating an e-mail address that the notification would come from and allowing users the ability to opt-in to the notification. Anyhow, very interesting idea. It is one we have been thinking about internally a lot. Please keep the ideas coming. We love hearing from our publisher base since we really want to provide what you guys need and want. Now that I have taken about half a page I think it is time to stop. Take care!

That’s my cue! Hi Matt, I am both the Eric of VentureWeek (yup, small world! – thank you again for your generous support) and the regular reader of Disruptive Thoughts Fraser is talking about. I too like the idea of some sort of automatic notification of subscription. It would create a bit more community around the feed.

Right now we can’t tell which of your subscriber base is new, which is the same and who left. This has to do with the way feeds work. There is no way cookie users within a feed and using IP addresses for identification is not accurate (since all of us are on a work IP and home IP during the day and the occasional s’bucks, etc.).

I wonder how many publishers out there would like this service. This is something we should figure out. My only concern would be the subscribers privacy. I think a lot of people enjoy feeds since they are anonymous (not mention they a better way to consume content). You don’t need to give up your e-mail address or anything personal making the feed completely spam free. However, this could be remedied by someone like us creating an e-mail address that the notification would come from and allowing users the ability to opt-in to the notification.

Anyhow, very interesting idea. It is one we have been thinking about internally a lot. Please keep the ideas coming. We love hearing from our publisher base since we really want to provide what you guys need and want. Now that I have taken about half a page I think it is time to stop. Take care!

What about if there was a button that you could put beside/below the Feedburner “subscribe to this feed” button that said something like “Let me know you’ve subscribed”. When you click on it it pops up a dialogue box where you can enter your name / blog addy / a comment / etc. and then it gets sent to the authors email. I just know that the few readers who’ve left me an email with “great post. subscribed!” have made my day. If feedburner was to make it easier for people to pass that message along (theoretically increasing the occurance) it would indirectly increase my love affair with feedburner.

What about if there was a button that you could put beside/below the Feedburner “subscribe to this feed” button that said something like “Let me know you’ve subscribed”. When you click on it it pops up a dialogue box where you can enter your name / blog addy / a comment / etc. and then it gets sent to the authors email.

I just know that the few readers who’ve left me an email with “great post. subscribed!” have made my day.

If feedburner was to make it easier for people to pass that message along (theoretically increasing the occurance) it would indirectly increase my love affair with feedburner.

I like the idea although I do think there would be a lot of publishers that wouldn’t want it included as they would be inundated with e-mail. It definitely needs to be opt-in. Upon thinking about this further over the weekend and this morning I believe the idea could be easily accomplished/executed using FeedFlare. One could create a FeedFlare that would link to a feedback type of form (or even just a straight mailto link would work) on the site that would allow people to send notes once they subscribe. If anyone is interested I would be happy to whip up a Flare – I am no programmer but they are super easy to whip up. Just shoot me an e-mail (erico@feedburner.com). This is essentially why we developed Flare. It will allow publishers to do all kinds of great things within in their feeds and sites. Also, we now have a Flare catalogue which users can submit Flare to so that other users don’t have to recreate the wheel. Great discussion guys! I never would’ve thought to use Flare for this purpose without it.

I like the idea although I do think there would be a lot of publishers that wouldn’t want it included as they would be inundated with e-mail. It definitely needs to be opt-in. Upon thinking about this further over the weekend and this morning I believe the idea could be easily accomplished/executed using FeedFlare. One could create a FeedFlare that would link to a feedback type of form (or even just a straight mailto link would work) on the site that would allow people to send notes once they subscribe. If anyone is interested I would be happy to whip up a Flare – I am no programmer but they are super easy to whip up. Just shoot me an e-mail (erico@feedburner.com).

This is essentially why we developed Flare. It will allow publishers to do all kinds of great things within in their feeds and sites. Also, we now have a Flare catalogue which users can submit Flare to so that other users don’t have to recreate the wheel. Great discussion guys! I never would’ve thought to use Flare for this purpose without it.

Of course I didn’t die, I’m gonna live for at least another 220 years or so thanks to the advancements of gene therapy. By then I’ll have run several marathons, possibly one or two on the moon. I ordered my pictures from the Marathon yesterday and will post them on my flickr account as soon as I get them. Until then you can see the pictures from my trip in the France set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/csakon/ Fraser, I’m expecting a marathon out of you quite soon. I’ve set the bar at 3 hours and 47 minutes.

Of course I didn’t die, I’m gonna live for at least another 220 years or so thanks to the advancements of gene therapy. By then I’ll have run several marathons, possibly one or two on the moon.

I ordered my pictures from the Marathon yesterday and will post them on my flickr account as soon as I get them. Until then you can see the pictures from my trip in the France set at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/csakon/

Fraser, I’m expecting a marathon out of you quite soon. I’ve set the bar at 3 hours and 47 minutes.

I’m training for the Toronto marathon, I think it’s in Oct… anything before that and I’d probably die on km 34. You’ll live ’til 220 but of course the gene therapy will have some kinks and you’ll come out looking a lot like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Joanriversjewe…rel=”nofollow”>this.

I’m training for the Toronto marathon, I think it’s in Oct… anything before that and I’d probably die on km 34.

You’ll live ’til 220 but of course the gene therapy will have some kinks and you’ll come out looking a lot like this.

[...] One of my fave new bloggers found via chartreuse (BETA) is a guy named Fraser at Disruptive Thoughts who has sweet idea burried in a post:  4) I wish there was an official (read: cool) way to notify someone that you’ve subscribed to their feed. I’ve had a few people send emails like “great posts. subscribed!” and it left a good taste in my mouth. I think some geek needs to develop a better way of informing the author, I’d embrace it. [...]

[...] Fraser of Disruptive Thoughts, Eric of Venture Week and of Feedburner and I discussed several months ago the potential of Feedburner to ID RSS subscribers (possibly by an offering where you can elect to give your name and/or email address at the point of subscription), an idea I fully endorse, so bloggers know who our readers are. In a conceptual extension of this, MyBlogLog has developed a service that essentially allows for more robust and dynamic communities to build around weblogs. The service just rolled out, and the functionality is very limited at this point, but the potential is huge: imagine sorting readers by profession, or imagine seeing a person’s picture beside comments, or having the functionality to sort comments by readers etc. To view the front page widget in action, and to see an example of a nascent community, visit Fred Wilson’s A VC and check out the widget box on the left side of the site. [...]

[...] the hardest working man in the blogosphere, is running an experiment to help rebuild his reading [...]