rssCloud By The Numbers
Here at WordPress.com we like to keep stats on the various features and resources available to our users. So as part of the release for rssCloud on WordPress.com I added internal stats to see how it was being used. It tracks things like the number of subscription requests and the number of sent notifications (pings) that get processed each day.
That’s where the numbers for my rssCloud Update post came from. It’s been three months since that post so I took another look at the numbers to see how things were going. The first thing I looked at was the number of subscription requests per day. I was a bit surprised by what I saw:
Turned out we’d had a bit of a spike 
Things were pretty consistent before that spike, getting between 160,000 and 200,000 subscription requests per day. Then, for a few days towards the end of January, subscriptions really started coming in. At the very tip of that peak there were 1,548,657 subscription requests in a single day. And as quickly as they came, they went, dropping to a daily average below what we were seeing before. Then this week we saw another (much smaller) spike back up to 359,759 requests in a single day.
Now I was curious, what did the numbers look like for pings sent out? Turns out there was a spike there as well, though not nearly as big:
The daily numbers were again pretty consistent, between 65,000 and 110,00 pings sent per day, with the weekends being on the lower end of the scale. Then, on the same day where the number of subscription requests had peaked we saw a spike in pings sent out; 143,769 (the red arrow). And just like the subscription numbers, after the spike the daily averages fell below their earlier norms. And then another peak this week. This time though the second peak was even higher, at 146,809 pings sent out in a single day.
The reach of rssCloud has been growing too. Back in November there were 135,000 WordPress.com blogs with at least one rssCloud subscriber. Today there are 237,420.
Makes me wonder what the next three months will bring.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Outstanding, keep up the hard work!
February 13th, 2010 at 1:28 am
That is such a totally bizarre spike. It almost make me think something went wrong things were duplicated, or ever triplicated for some odd reason. Do you have any idea what it might be? Oh well, thanks for sharing the data.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:43 am
I haven’t found anything that would indicate an error with the numbers.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:35 am
New academic semester in January – blogs a required activity?
February 13th, 2010 at 1:41 am
That’s an interesting possibility. I’m not entirely sure yet where the spike came from.
February 13th, 2010 at 2:05 am
National Blogging month? lol!
February 13th, 2010 at 4:33 am
Isn’t that every month?
February 13th, 2010 at 2:51 am
I have posted about 400 in my blog.
I exported my rss (use blogline) to save in my PC, but when I imported it to another reader (google reader), why not all of posts can be read. Any advice for me?
THX
February 13th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
You’ll want to contact Google Reader support for this issue Akhmad. http://www.google.com/support/reader/?hl=en
February 13th, 2010 at 3:00 am
My head is spinning. It all sounds very exciting, and I’m not quite sure if I should be “doing” something, or if this is just information to tell us what WP is doing. I’d like to get in on the fun, just not sure where to begin…
February 13th, 2010 at 4:26 am
If you are curious about rssCloud there’s more info at http://rsscloud.org/
February 13th, 2010 at 4:43 am
you guys are just rolling out those updates, great work thanks
February 13th, 2010 at 5:19 am
Ah, the wonder of the spike…
February 13th, 2010 at 5:48 am
January and February have undoubtedly been good so far. Lets hope for more spikes to come. Happy Blogging.
February 13th, 2010 at 7:13 am
I’m new to this, but oddly I saw similar spikes in my own little wordpress universe that I couldn’t account for. I think the academic calendar idea could be valid.
February 13th, 2010 at 7:58 am
I don’t want to sound paranoid, but, Some guys might be trying to analyse the system; throwing out “feelers”. It could be some kind of a trial or maybe a failed attempt.
PS: My blog too registered an inexplicable rise in viewership around JAN 24-26.
February 13th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Could be.
February 13th, 2010 at 8:23 am
I confess to having difficulty understanding the whole Ping thing. Try as I might, I just don’t understand it. Also, when I ask for new post notifications (Karate Nottingham WordPress) I don’t receive them. I feel that the instructions are too difficult for me to follow. Regards, Richard
February 13th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Information on the rssCloud is available at http://rsscloud.org/
February 13th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Well, creating a blog was part of my new year’s resolution (if that’s what we still call them). Perhaps it was the same for others. It’d be interesting to see if there was a corresponding fall off in gym activity!
February 13th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
gee. It’s almost as if there was some kind of event at the end of January that had a lot of people blogging and chattering… but the same sort of people who would know about and subscribe to RSSCloud.
Some kind of huge, media-hyped event, that dominated tech blogging leading up to that event…
( http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1001q3f8hhr/event/index.html )
February 13th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Steve’s influences extending to rssCloud? Now that would be news worthy
February 13th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I’m still trying to figure out how to somehow take credit.
February 13th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
I’m sure we’d get plenty of takers in that department
February 13th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Maybe something has gone wrong somewhere with adding up??
February 13th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
I haven’t found anything to indicate that.
February 13th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
A statistical aberration : )
February 13th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Just a shot in the dark, but what about the election in Mass between Scott Brown and Coakley? I know on some of the other blogs which were following the last 2 weeks of the campaign, they were reporting massive spikes in their daily traffic. Especially as the special election date drew near.
Even though it was one election in a single state – it really took on a life of its own in terms of blog-traffic.
February 13th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Second thought, I have to agree with Lagunatic and suggest that it was the Douginator Online Magazine that did this for you guys… Just joking, really.
I cannot express in words how wonderful wordpress is. Again, keep up the hard work!
February 13th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
wow, thanks for this, i’m excited to try it
February 13th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
any recent external partnerships that promoted the site? Perhaps LinkedIn.com or one of the other major social media sites publicly promoted wp? I’ve seen increased discussion about blogs on linkedin.com over the last month. Maybe another approach to asking that question, any correlations in the research – has another social media network seen a spike around late jan.? maybe that could give clues to spike.Any (widely used) phone applications developed over the last month which could contribute to the numbers? any relationship in the demographics requesting service or geographical region?
tamihonesty.net
February 13th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
I noticed that over December, my stats spiked hugely… I think it was because I was on holidays, so put a lot more work into my blog. If this happened all over the blogosphere, a pretty huge spike would occur…
February 13th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
This may be slightly unrelated, but is there a way to keep track of visitors on your blog? Like a little number at the bottom that says “6276751651656561656 people have visited this site” or “5 people have visited…” etc (whichever is more accurate), that will let you know how many hits you’ve had in total (not just by days, weeks or months).
February 14th, 2010 at 2:52 am
Check out the Blog Stats Widget
February 13th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Interesting to try. Curious to see about the response. Good idea.
February 14th, 2010 at 3:11 am
Really strange! how’d that happen?
February 14th, 2010 at 11:23 am
@ Zé: Well that widget only tell us how many page views we had in a day etc. and not visitors stat(count, location etc.) nor we can have such information from our blog stat’s page. I think thebexfiles was asking for this feature.
February 15th, 2010 at 3:16 am
stats are always enjoyable to check… kudos to wordpress!
February 15th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
In the Midwest, we have seen quite a lot of snow. I know that my blog sees much greater traffic on days when the weather is bad, or when schools and businesses are closed. This may contribute to the cause of the spike, as well.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Maybe students in computer schools. HEHE. Even in our high school, it is required to have a blog account here, part of our computer class.
Anyway, that’s a great progress, keep up.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
So, can individual bloggers see the RSS/Subscription stats from their own blogs?
February 16th, 2010 at 12:20 am
My gut reaction when I saw that spike was “Google Buzz”. But I wouldn’t know. Any more info on where these originated? One country? Language area? Botnet? Palo Alto?
February 16th, 2010 at 6:55 am
this is really nice… hope to be a collective force & contribute in return. cheers!
February 17th, 2010 at 1:17 am
about a comment towards the top-
when we started the semester, in our media class, we had to start blogs. maybe other schools did this too.
February 17th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
ooops, sorry that was me…I just joined, and am clueless, so …Anyways, carry on. No more spikes from me
February 17th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
my guess: it is this long cold winter that keeps us inside blogging.
and I really enjoy it.
as for me i also started mine during those days. a new winteractivity to be connected with the world without getting cold feet.
February 18th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
very cool
February 18th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Technology is great and I love the concept of blogging. Your work on the RSS clouds is a great idea for an overall picture of blog use. Keep up the good work and Happy Blogging !!!
February 18th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Although peeks and falls my stats have been rising for a little while now. Nov and Jan about the same. But isn’t that normal as more people drop in and like what they see? I was surprised to find my blog being translated into Russian (I think it is).
Clouds and pings are a bit of a mystery but I think I have a general idea.
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February 19th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Great!!! But I wonder how does one handle such huge traffic, wordpress.com traffic rank’s 19 which is traffic!!
February 19th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
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February 19th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Thanks for the stats and keep up the great work!
February 20th, 2010 at 12:48 am
I require my students to blog, and I daisy-chain all my blogs. Traffic naturally went way up on all my blogs as curious students clicked on the links to the other blogs. My website traffic spiked, then dipped, for the same reason.
February 20th, 2010 at 8:35 am
thank thanks
February 20th, 2010 at 9:50 am
ohh!! thank you very much viewing my blog…!!
…thank you again!!!
February 20th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
I have had recent traffic spikes and reached new highs recently as well. But in my case I know why. Anytime Tiger Woods is in the news I get traffic.
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:40 am
thx for this posting,,,
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:41 am
great work thanks
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:08 am
My stats have stopped completely for three days now. Whats up with that? Is something broke?
February 23rd, 2010 at 5:28 pm
fascinating. spike happened around the time i started, i think. it’s very addictive and i feel like i have a new online family to find! had been meaning to start a blog for ages. love the fact it’s so easy to upload my images as well as haiku/posts….
February 25th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
The recent spike could partly have come from the @blissdom conference in Nashville in February. I saw a lot of women from this conference saying they were switching to word press for some reason. Have seen some suggestions going on Twitter about it also.
February 26th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Ummm. CEA, Superbowl, Apple’s announcement thingy. Weren’t all of those around that time? Could have been people looking for more information? Maybe.
February 26th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Perhaps it’s the quality of the blogs which is going up, too. As more posters keep their blog consistent and on topic, a great many more readers will find something good to read. Of course, a series of snowstorms is of help, too. And maybe there is a little leakout from posters on other blog hosting sites who are dissatisfied with the service they are getting. I certainly do prefer WordPress to some of the other sites I have visited. Keep up the good work!