July 2008 Monthly Update

My, it's been a long time since I've written a monthly update. Yikes! So time to catch up and kick things back into gear here.

In the last six months (yes, it really has been that long), FeedBlitz circulation has grown by nearly a million subscribers, or about 20%. That's actually a little less on a month by month basis than least year (on average), but that metric doesn't tell the whole story.

What has changed significantly over the last 6 months is the volume of messages FeedBlitz sends. back in October last year, FeedBlitz sent 32 million messages. In January, that figure had risen to just under 42 million messages. Last month, July, FeedBlitz sent 65.4 million messages, up over 50% in the last six months; in other words publishers are using FeedBlitz much more than before.

And so a lot of what we've been doing here is working on scalability - the ability to have our technology handle that kind of growth without going belly up. This work is what's taken the bulk of the time over the last six months, and what has kept me off air, as it were, for much of that time. Improving scalability has not been without its challenges - it's one of the toughest things to do in a 7x24 service when one gets to a certain size - and we've had moments where various elements of the infrastructure have shown signs of strain. I'm happy with the overall progress that's been made so far, although we're always looking for ways to improve further.

Not that we've been totally stuck down in the bit mines, mind you. Thanks to generous publishers in the FeedBlitz network, we now have translations on the principal subscriber pages in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Dutch. We've added MSN and Yahoo to the instant messaging options available to all. New capabilities to the template editor. And more to come later this week.

Finally, what with being so busy and all, I've been neglecting the stats update at the feedblitz.com home page. So that's changed too. There's the familiar circulation number, the newsletters number (which is more conservatively calculated than before, excluding active newsletters that don't have any current active subscribers), and a new metric: the number of active publishers. Currently standing at over 63,000, this small army of publishers - corporate marketers, media companies, bloggers and more - use FeedBlitz to automate, customize and manage their online email newsletter marketing, with nearly 100 subscribers each.

So now all I have to do is tell everyone else what this is all about.

But not now. Stay tuned...

   

January 2008 Monthly Update

During January we focused on performance, scale and serving our growing customer base better. Does this matter? You bet. Because FeedBlitz now delivers email newsletters on behalf of 52,335 active publishers (up nearly 5% on December), and our largest list now has over 330,000 subscribers. Whether you're a small blogger or a corporate email marketer, FeedBlitz continues to get the job done.

Our focus on scalability this month has made a difference. Despite the growth, out nightly runs are now finishing much earlier than they were at the New Year, and our manual "on demand" mailings are now going out significantly faster than they were at the start of the Year. Even as we continue to add thousands of publishers a month, we will always strive to serve everyone well.

So to the monthly metrics:

Total circulation: 4,930,618, up 9.8% (or nearly 440,000!) on December 2007.
Messages sent: 41,817,504 (up 5.7%)
Average messages / day: 1,348,952
Busiest Day: 2,043,583 messages (Jan 29)
FeedBlitz.com page views: 1,962,031 (up 15% on December)
FeedBlitz.com visitors: 731,810 (up 10.6%)

   

237% growth for FeedBlitz in 2007

Now that was an interesting year.

The metrics show that FeedBlitz continued to thrive. Not only that, however, for in 2007 we continued to innovate both our service and our business model (as well as weather the occasional storm). In fact, if there were any constants at all for FeedBlitz in 2007, they were change and growth.

So instead of the usual monthly summary, this post is a quick look back at the whole year.

2007 Highlights included:

• Introducing the first and only ad-funded free newsletter service.
• Introducing of the first and only email newsletter advertising and monetization service.
• Introducing the first and only newsletter service to enable distribution to the web, IM, Twittter and audio as well as email.
• Simplifying our business model
• Enabling all publishing features for all accounts, even the free ones.
• Delivering branded subscriber interfaces for all publishers.

All good stuff. Now, regular readers will also know that I believe in being open about the challenges we face and using this blog to inform you all about what's going on and what we're doing about it. So, in that spirit, some of the larger bumps in the road we had to resolve in 2007 included:

• Dealing with a couple of database meltdowns.
• Reducing our circulation by eliminating an abusive publisher.

Yet, despite attempts to abuse FeedBlitz and the challenge of managing the message volume increase we saw in 2007, I'm delighted to report that FeedBlitz's deliverability has actually improved. Even though I say so myself, that's not a trivial achievement. It took (and continues to take) much time and effort, especially for a self-service web application like FeedBlitz, to keep the service as squeaky clean as possible.

Managing Spam and Abuse in a Self-Service Application

We serve over 50,000 publishers at FeedBlitz, and we do that by allowing each and every one of you to manage your accounts yourselves, without waiting for someone here to "bless" your list or deign to give you access to your subscribers. Same for your readers - they can do what they need to, quickly and easily, without our being involved.

Of course, a self service site like ours can be abused, risking a decline in deliverability. If we can't get the mail through for you, which is the whole point after all, then you have a problem - and we have two basic choices.

Choice one is to give up and go home. Even though a smaller competitor took that option recently - go figure - it's not an option we'd ever consider. What, FeedBlitz, give up? NO WAY.

So choice two is to get better. That's the FeedBlitz choice. We've always been strong on anti-spam, and have continually strengthened our technologies and policies in order to reduce the risk of spammers entering FeedBlitz. But it's also true that sometimes what we have had hasn't been good enough. When that happens, we take the only path we can. We get better. Quickly.

Nowhere has this approach been more vividly brought home than our dealing with abuse (i.e. spam). Which begs a fairly reasonable question: How can we manage to improve deliverability while making sure our self-service approach remains viable, available and isn't abused?

Since I haven't fully written about this before, I thought I'd summarize some (but not all) of the methods we've evolved over the last couple of years to prevent and detect abuse.

No-Compromise Prevention

• We require image verification to stop bots.
• We require online subscriptions to be proactively confirmed via email.
• We don't allow generic or otherwise potentially suspect email addresses to be imported.
• We zealously apply suppression lists.
• We completely block lists, publishers and hosts that trigger our own spam filters: If we would flag your message as spam coming in, there's no way we will allow ourselves to be used to send it out.
• No scripts permitted in outbound messages.

Rigorous Monitoring, Quick Reaction

• We use third party services to monitor our deliverability and major blacklists.
• We quickly manage any issues that are detected.
• We maintain feedback loops for all major ISPs, bar one (simply for technical reasons).
• We monitor core service metrics internally on all lists for all publishers every day.
• We warn and even suspend lists that deviate from our internal quality guides.
• We send service courtesy notes to subscribers during import to flush out poorly permissioned or abusive lists.

Over Compliance

• Unsubscribe requests made online are honored immediately.
• CAN-SPAM - check.
• Complaints from ISPs received via feedback loops are actioned immediately.
• Automated bounce handling to lighten your workload and keep your lists clean.
• We maintain feedback loops for all major ISPs, bar one (simply for technical reasons).

Bottom line benefit: We take care of business. Your messages get through.

Models and Metrics

Meanwhile, in 2007 we updated our business model, updating our freemium approach to give equal access to all features for all publishers, adding advertising as an option. The effect of introducing ads, eliminating feature set disparities and introducing variable pricing has been striking:

• Since we introduced ads into free newsletters in September, circulation has grown 73%.
• Since we introduced subscriber-based pricng in October, circulation has grown 36%

2007 By the Numbers

A year ago, I was proud to be able to write about FeedBlitz's growth in 2006 - up over 760% from December 2005.

A year later, our growth continues relentlessy, and shows no sign of letting up. At the end of December 2007, circulation was 4,491,000 - up 19% over November 2007 alone, and up over 237% compared to December 2006. That's more than a three-fold increase.

FeedBlitz now:

• Serves over 50,000 publishers.
• Automates the production of nearly 200,000 newsletters.
• Has an active circulation of 4.5 million.
• Handles lists with circulations all the way up to over 200,000 readers.
• Sends over 39 million messages a month (December).

Our busiest day in 2007 - in fact, our busiest day ever - was Tuesday, December 18, when FeedBlitz sent 2,136,587 messages. No wonder we had to upgrade our database server this year!

Change and Growth

More of the same in 2008? Predictions are always hard, especially when the future's involved, but let's see: More growth, no doubt. More change, you bet. More challenges? Time will tell.

But whatever happens in 2008, two final thoughts about the year just ended.

• To the over three million subscribers who joined us last year: Welcome.
• To the publishers entrusting us with their lists: Thank you.

And to everyone: All the best for 2008.

Phil

   

November 2007 Monthly Update

Much of the changes we publicized in November were about the new ad service that we launched in October. The most important change for bloggers, I think, was the simplification of the process to place an ad to take readers directly to your subscription page. If you want to promote your blog to like minded readers, advertising with FeedBlitz and picking the right keywords or content channel is a great - and easy - way to attract attention and new subscribers. We also introduced a year-end bonus, and wondered about pricing arbitrage for blog reading on the Kindle.

Meanwhile, FeedBlitz also introduced new flexibility and simplicity to the subscription process (OK that was early December, so I'm getting a little flexible with the dates here). You've seen parts 1 and 2 so far; part 3 is being readied and you'll see that in a few days.

Important: Maintenance Downtime, Dec 17.

FeedBlitz will be offline on from midnight to 07:00 EST December 17 as our hosting provider is moving to a brand new data center. Once the systems come back up we'll play catch up on the mailings. Please plan accordingly.

And so to the numbers.

• Circulation: 3,769,964 (up 14% on October)
• feedblitz.com page views: 1,951,498 (down just over 2% - I blame Thanksgiving)
• feedblitz.com unique visitors: 783.079 (down <>
• Total messages sent: 37,056,996 (up 16% )
• Average messages / day: 1,235,233
• Peak daily messages: 1,646,022 (Nov 15)

   

October 2007 Monthly Update

What did FeedBlitz do in October?

Well, in October, FeedBlitz became the first ad-funded email newsletter service to to enable targeted ads to subscribers, the first email service to democratize email ad creation so anyone could create an ad, the first email service to share revenues with its publishers, the first email service to introduce auction-based CPM ad pricing, and the first ad service (I think anywhere - please correct me of I'm wrong) to make the current market bid prices visible to advertisers.

Plus we moved the database server around to make things faster.

Other than that, not much. How about you?

Seriously, though, since the ad network debuted earlier this week we have seen ad impressions double, the rate of blogger signups is increasing, plus we've simplified the signup and ad generation processes for both publishers and advertisers to make it easier to get started. It's still early days - don't expect to retire on your ad earnings just yet! - but watch this space. We have some innovative programs coming down the pike to really get things going.

One use of the ad network is to grow your circulation by advertising your own blog. Go to the Newsletter Center and follow the links to the sign up form code. There you'll find a URL that is your online signup form. Copy it to the clipboard, go to www.feedblitz.com/f?Ads and create an ad for your blog. Paste in your subscription page URL as the destination link for the ad, target it and voila! Done. Go on, give it a try. It's only $25 to start, and that will probably buy you 25,000 impressions if you start now before prices bid up too far. That's a fabulous deal to get your message in front of other subscribers in relevant locations reading relevant content. If you want to join the others who are monetizing their lists, there's a very simple 1 step process (pick your blog's category) to starting.

Meanwhile, October's metrics showed what can only be described as very robust growth over September:

• Circulation: 3,299,499 (up 14% on September)
• feedblitz.com page views: 1,999,745 (up 12%)
• feedblitz.com unique visitors: 786,221 (up 14%)
• Total messages sent: 31,957,801 (up 28% - see, I told you September was just a blip)
• Average messages / day: 1,030,897
• Peak daily messages: 1,624,010 (October 31)

If ever there was any doubt about the market acceptability for an ad-funded email service, these numbers pretty much blow that doubt away.

   

September 2007 Monthly Update

October, with Hallowe'en heralding the onset of wintry weather, is perhaps the "scariest" month of the year. For me, though, it was last month, September, because we gave everyone all the capabilities of Newsletter Edition (ok, nothing scary there; quite the reverse in fact). No, the scary part was starting the process of updating the FeedBlitz business model to one that was ad-based for our non-paying customers.

As it turns out, with this change, FeedBlitz introduced the first significant ad-funded email newsletter service. Ever.

Anyway, I'm pleased to say that everyone is now enjoying the new features we made available with this move, which is one of several ad-related changes we're making. What's next, you may well ask?

Well, for a start, we promised revenue sharing. And revenue sharing will be delivered by the new (opt-in) email advertising platform we're now beta testing. If you get this newsletter via email you'll see at least one ad embedded in this article; other readers may preview it online here. There's a lot more to be said about this exciting program, and I'm going to save that for one or more posts later this week.

Just to whet your appetite, though, with this new technology, everyone will have the chance to opt in to this ad program (it will be optional) and monetize their mailing lists. And everyone will also have the chance to advertise their blog, book, business or service in FeedBlitz-powered email newsletters.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What happened after the ad-based service appeared? Here are September's metrics:

• Circulation: 2,888,845 (up 9% on August)
• feedblitz.com page views: 1,780,344 (up 2.7%)
• feedblitz.com unique visitors: 688,866 (up 2.2%)
• Total messages sent: 24,904,226 (down 10%)
• Average messages / day: 830,141
• Peak daily messages: 1,018,458 (September 18)

Although site traffic was up, mailing volume was still down somewhat in September over August. Problem? Doesn't appear so - just looks like one of those things, a blip of sorts. October's mailing metrics are nicely up: the peak October day so far (October 4th) sent 1,198,503 messages, up nearly 18% on September's best effort.

Finally, we have had some database performance problems recently that we're working hard to minimize. I'm glad to say that the new server has arrived - it's quite the beast - and will be brought online this week, all other things being equal. There will be some downtime when we fire it up into production service, so expect to see a note here about that as and when.

So with that out of the way, think about whether you'd like to be part of the beta for our revenue-sharing email ad program. Mail me if you'd like to be in!

   

August 2007 Monthly Update

The big news we announced in August was the massive upgrade to Newsletter Edition we'll be making available to all our free service users. Ad-funded, the change will enable all of FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition's features for everyone, greatly increasing the mailing list and email newsletter potential for casual bloggers and professional marketers alike. We have started to roll out some of these changes already, with the rest due to take place next week.

To help ensure that the emails we send get delivered by your ISP, we launched our new "Quality Alert" feature to help you identify problems with your email newsletter before they become a crisis. We also made changes to subscriber import and other areas of policy to reduce the risk of future terms of service issues for genuine publishers. By keeping our slate squeaky-clean, your messages will keep being delivered.

Meanwhile, we also made some performance improvements to the site. Large list owners, particularly those with 50,000 or more subscribers in their accounts, will now find that subscriber search is much quicker, and that their subscriber pages render much more quickly. If you have a smaller mailing list, your subscriber displays will render more quickly as well; you just may not notice the difference quite so much.

So to the monthly metrics. While circulation rose, site visits were down a little (probably due to summer vacations in the northern hemisphere). The mailing metrics were way down on July, largely because July's metrics were boosted by the problem user we dealt with here. These numbers show signs of picking up, despite the long weekend in the US and Canada, as we continue our susbcriber and publisher circulation growth. And so to the details:

Circulation: 2,629,578 (up 7.8% on July)
feedblitz.com page views: 1,733,446 (down 1%)
feedblitz.com unique visitors: 674,081 (down 0.3%)
Total messages sent: 27,413,270 (down 34%)
Average messages / day: 884,299
Peak daily messages: 1,390,297 (August 31)

   

July 2007 Monthly Update

July turned out to be a relatively quiet month in terms of new features, so without further ado (and in an attempt to compensate for last month's very long post), here are the highlights:

• New search feature to boost the circulation and lifespan your blog's older posts.
• Newsletter Edition saw excellent early adoption (and continues to do so).
• We dealt with a large terms of service violation and then some of the silly things people said about it.

As is my wont, a quick run-down on the month's metrics and their changes from June:

Month-end circulation: 2,439,536 (up nearly 5% on the adjusted figure of 2,330,144)
feedblitz.com page views: 1,750,631 (up 3%)
feedblitz.com unique visitors: 676,466 (up 9%)
Total messages sent: 41,343,196 (up 11%)
Average messages / day: 1,333,651
Peak daily messages: 2,054,380 (July 19)

For those who remember last month's summary, the volume sent was somewhere between Tanzania and Colombia on the population scale.

   

June 2007 Monthly Update

Back in the saddle again, and the biggest news last month was the launch of the FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition, a new service that enables any publisher to deliver customized content to any subscriber no matter how that subscriber subscribers.

In other words, if you’re a blogger, you can capture subscriber details (such as name and location) and use that to create customized content to that user. Personalized, targeted content means better higher returns – Web 2.0 gets personal. All driven from your blog.

For email newsletter marketers, you can use FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition to reach both your current newsletter subscribers and Web 2.0 subscribers – all with one service meeting the needs of both, bridging the gap as readers transition from legacy communications to social media. If you don’t have a blog or an RSS feed, FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition will create them for you- all you need to do is type in your articles.

The bottom line is what we’re calling “One Touch Publishing” – no matter how you create your content, all you need to do is publish it once and FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition will customize it, publish it and distribute it to your subscribers without your knowing how. Consistent delivery, consistent reporting and consistent management for all your communications – that’s what Newsletter Edition delivers.

FeedBlitz Newsletter Edition pricing starts at under $2 for publishers with under 10 unique subscribers, which makes it really affordable. It includes email, RSS and web customization, demographic capture and schedule changes in one solution. So if you haven’t tried it out yet, give it a whirl! And become a power publisher in one easy step.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course. After 4 weeks there are over 80 Newsletter Edition publications, which is more than I’d expected at this stage. Welcome all.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we had a database outage on June 21 and subsequent problems getting everything back on track - thanks for everyone who stuck through it. We’ve been fine tuning the system ever since to reduce the problems that caused the outage, and have been steadily improving our robustness while still growing the subscriber base (more on this below). Things were certainly sticky back there for a while, with performance issues aplenty as we tuned the system while keeping the mails going, but I’m happy to say that for the last couple of days it’s been humming along quite nicely. Getting the messages out reliably has been job#1, and that’s been our focus the last three weeks or so.

It’s still true, however, that emails for the US east coast are taking until 9am or 10am to finish mailing. FeedBlitz is now routinely sending over one million pieces each morning, and there’s no getting around it – that takes a fair amount of time and effort to do. If you want to see your messages emerge more quickly than that, one option is to edit your publication’s time zone and move it to a different time zone. If you’re on the US east coast, try moving an hour to Atlantic Time. If you’re anywhere else in the US, try going over to Pacific Time. Rest of the world – pick the time zone that’s right for you. You’ll be happy that you did.

Alternatively, you can pick a paid upgrade (either Turbo or Newsletter Edition) which will enable you to choose a different schedule altogether (including manual, Express, weekly or on demand). Log in to your dashboard to explore upgrade options.

To the monthly metrics then. FeedBlitz left May with a circulation of 2,523,249, up 35% over April. June? June’s circulation topped 3,053,875 – up another 21% month on month and only six weeks after blowing past the 2 million mark. The web site saw over 621,000 visits (up 8%) with page views up correspondingly to 1.616 million.

Message metrics were even more impressive.

• Total messages sent: 37,094,694 (up nearly 69% from May)
• Average messages / day: 1,236,490
• Peak daily messages: 1,702,572 (June 26)

That’s the equivalent of nearly 40 million page views delivered via email, so not only has circulation grown, but on average publishers are using FeedBlitz more.

Or, putting it into one of those silly but fun analogies, FeedBlitz basically emailed the equivalent (more or less) of the entire population of Kenya last month. Poland’s next!

Still, a point worth discussing at this juncture is, well, what does this mean to the average publisher? Consider these two data points.

Firstly, of the publishers in FeedBlitz that track open rates (it’s optional, off by default), reported open rates are 31% on average (your mileage will, of course, vary). Open rates are generally under-reported for technical reasons, but let’s stick with this number as it’s the one we have. So, assuming that the average extends across FeedBlitz system-wide, FeedBlitz generated nearly 11.5 million actual page views in June (somewhere between Cuba and Zambia, according to my new nifty population scale).

Secondly, and quite coincidentally, Fred Wilson (the cynics at Wired will love this one) blogged about his reach – the number of readers reported actually reading his RSS feed - which is more or less the RSS equivalent of an email open rate. His reported reach is currently under 10%. Now, Fred uses FeedBlitz (so we contribute to his circulation and his reach), but he doesn’t track email open rates and (even if he did I wouldn’t share them). But I would assume that, given he’s an “A-lister” and a venture capitalist, his audience is heavily into RSS as a communications medium. Perhaps I’m wrong about this - may very well be very wrong - but that’s my assumption at any rate.

So. Based on these numbers though, it sure looks to me (based on my assumptions) that email subscriptions to your blog will, on average, outperform an RSS feed in terms of the ratio of subscribers actually reading what you have to say (certainly once your circulation gets to be of a certain scale). And if that’s the case, if you’re not offering an email option for your readers, you’re missing out on both circulation and eyeballs. And therefore revenue. Your mileage will vary, and perhaps Fred’s case is extreme (his reach started at over 50% when his circulation was smaller), but if you need a reason to offer a newsletter edition of your blog then these data points surely seem to give you one. Or at least some extra food for thought.

On which note, we’re back to doing more interesting things now the service is on a more even keel, and this post is already waaaay too long. Onwards.

   

May 2007 Monthly Update

The big news for us this month was subscriber growth. We left April with an active circulation of 1,868,702; in May we not only passed the 2 million mark but ended the month with a circulation of 2,523,249 - that's 35% growth in just 31 days.

Wow.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, web site metrics were also strongly up: May saw over 575,000 visits (up nearly 19% over April's 484,000) and 1,473,000 page views (up nearly 14% over the prior month's 1,294,000).

Last month I introduced a new set of metrics to add more perspective. Here are April's numbers again:

• Total messages sent: 16,820,525
• Average messages sent / day: 560,684
• Peak daily messages sent: 727,143 (April 10)

We blew these away big time in May:

• Total messages sent: 22,005,020
• Average messages / day: 709,840
• Peak daily messages: 1,246,772 (May 31)

Not all was goodness last month; while we were growing like crazy an apparent hardware issue at our hosting service took one of our servers down; not good news. This placed considerable strain on the remaining systems which, frankly, showed - mailing and web site performance crawled. We've been doing some work since to reduce the impact of this kind of failure in the future. The large increase in circulation has also seen some changes in how some larger users are using FeedBlitz's facilities: we're going to take that into account as we move forward too.

Updates

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we introduced new features and updated others, including:

• Adding an additional Twitter option
• Enabling "Email to a Friend" without a login
• The new Referrer's Report
• Article ratings, powered by outbrain
• (My personal favorite) Recent post summaries

So if you haven't yet checked these out, do, because June is going to be a very exciting month for us and new capabilities. Better get ready...

   

FeedBlitz circulation surges past 2,000,000

As of a few minutes ago, FeedBlitz's active circulation (the number of active reader - active publication pairs) blew through the two million mark, to 2,009,613. It took us just under eight months to go from our first seven figure total to today. By comparison, our first million took nearly 14 months to achieve.

FeedBlitz has established a continuous track record of growth and innovation in the RSS to email market. The only mainstream vendor who's business model does not depend on selling advertising (hey, we actually have a business model); we give the most options and the most flexibility to bloggers, publishers and marketers looking to extend their reach with a professional, automated HTML email newsletter solution. We offer real-time analytics, unsubscribe and referral reports, broadcasts that compliment RSS-driven publication, and complete subscriber management. We are the only RSS to mail newsletter vendor that supports marketing using innovative social media platforms such as Twitter, and there's more on the way on that front. Like our one million article, we're in the middle of a beta. It's for an exciting - dare I say it, ground breaking - marketing and lead generation service we'll be launching soon.

So a few metrics to wrap up this milestone, to parallel the first:

• Our largest list has well in excess of 100,000 subscribers.
• The next five have over 50k each.
• The 10 largest publishers account for a circulation of over 580,000.
• There are 23 publishers with circulations greater than 10k.
• Our busiest day (so far) was May 11, 2007, where we sent over 790,000 updates.
• Circulation has grown 7.5% since the end of April alone.

So thank you to everyone for your confidence and support!

   

April 2007 Monthly Update

With a little more time in hand than last month, here's a quick update on the state of the Internet's largest blog and RSS to mail service.

• Active circulation was 1,868,702, up just over 5% from last month's 1,773,615.
• Web site visits were 484,000 with 1,294,000 page views

The web metrics are actually down a little from March, but this appears to be entirely due to a noticeable drop in activity around the first week of April and the associated Easter / Passover holidays.

This month I'm introducing a new set of metrics for you all - the total number of messages sent, and the maximum number of messages sent on any given day. Remember that a message is not just an email since we now support Twitter. These counts are subscriber updates, and don't include "transactional" emails that we send to verify subscriptions, update publishers etc.

For April, then, the subscriber volume metrics were:

• Total messages sent: 16,820,525
• Average messages sent / day: 560,684
• Peak daily messages sent: 727,143 (April 10)

FWIW so far today (May 1, 1:30 pm edt) the total is 681,883, so we may see April's peak beaten immediately. [May 2nd: Not quite! May Day's total ended up at 709,666, making it our second busiest day after April 10]

Updates

The PayPal issues from earlier in the month appear to have been resolved - thanks to everyone who stuck with us until that problem was sorted out.

In addition, a lot of people wrote about our Twitter integration (initial post here, how to stop it here). There's more coming on this front, lots more excitement is en route.

We also welcomed Jory Des Jardins to the Board; she's a fabulous addition to the firm (and I'm not saying that just because I've a Board meeting in a few minutes, honest!).

A great new feature was added to FeedBlitz last month that didn't get much notice, but I think is a very useful tool, so I'm going to mention it again. If you haven't already done so, take a look at the unsubscribe report - there's some very interesting data about your subscribers there.

Finally, we tweaked some features last month but I didn't blog about the changes; I'll get that done this week.

Betas

We're running some :-) You know how to reach me...

   

Quick FeedBlitz Update

Things have been pretty busy around here recently and I've been remiss in posting updates for both February and March. I don't currently have the circulation metrics for the end of February or March either, and I'm afraid I'm not going to go back and mine them from the database. They're all up on the prior month of course (current April 9th score: 1,773,615), and so we're back at our steady-state circulation growth of 5%-7% per month after January's 16% bump.

March on the whole got to be bumpy in the second half. Following the hardware failure mid-month we have a number of scale-related issues in the last week that caused problems with a number of mailings. These took us more time than usual to fix and, with hindsight, I messed up in not blogging about it at the time. My bad.

That said, all is now hunky dory, with the exception of making the knowledge base consistently available. That ought to be done this week.

Better yet, we have some very exciting news coming up ... it's going to be an interesting week. Stay tuned!

   

January 2007 Update

January Metrics

In the prior monthly update I discussed the changes at FeedBlitz during 2006 and the milestones we'd achieved. This month, it's back to your regularly scheduled metrics.

Big news, numbers-wise, was that FeedBlitz's active circulation topped one and a half million, only 4 months after we reached the million mark. The month-end value was 1,542,602, with 91,300 active RSS feeds / blogs in the service. We ended December with a circulation of 1,331,600, so January was up nearly 16% over the month before. Welcome to the over 210,000 new subscribers we're delivering to.

Meanwhile, over at FeedBlitz.com, January saw just over 1.2 million page views and 466,000 visits, up from December by over 20% and 14% respectively.

Tagalicious New Features

New features added to the service in January were a lot about the tags (or categories or labels, depending on what your service calls them). Tag related capabilities added were:

• Article tag search
• Tag-based subscription filtering

Here's a site that's using tag filtering on their email subscription form. It's exactly the usage we had in mind when we built the feature.

Tags aside, we also added publisher notifications for forwarded articles, the industry's most comprehensive automatic link tracking, and syndication cloning. We also fixed a short-lived but significant subscriber count reporting bug.

The pace is continuing in February, with the recent announcement of our new widgets capability. There's more en route this month, so stay tuned!