FeedBurner’s Changing Subscriber Feed Count - What’s up with that?

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I have had FeedBurners subscriber feed count clicket on iwebis since the launch of this blog and have never quite understood something. Why does the count go up and down so quickly? At first I thought it was me when 20 subscribers left at one time. Did I smell? Did I have bad breath? Did I offend someone? Then a couple of days later they would all come back which would make me happy again. After this happened a few times I started to think that maybe it had nothing to do with me.

I finally decided to do a search to find the reason for this problem. I knew it was probably a simple reason and everyone else already knows why. So I found the answer on Problogger. Rick Klau, Vice President of Publisher Services at FeedBurner says..

The fluctuations are almost always due to people using stand-alone computers who don’t turn their computer on, or don’t load their feed reader on a given day. If their feed reader doesn’t ask for the feed that day, we don’t see them, and consequently don’t include them as a subscriber. (note from Darren - this is why on weekends numbers tend to go down as a result of less people checking their feed reader).

There is a lot more to the explanation so read it here. So there you have it. It’s not likely that the reason for the changing feed reader count is because of something I said or did