Bloglines’ Rapid Growth Gives It Great Power

Using publicly available data from Bloglines, Infoworld’s John Udell analyzed the subscription trends of several major tech blogs.

Udell says he’s really not sure how to interpret this because the data suggests that while growth is constant, the rate of growth varies episodically. Despite the nuances, here’s what I clearly gleaned – more folks are subscribing to blogs via RSS and they’re reading them on Bloglines.

As of this writing, more than one third of my 1200 FeedBurner feed readers (420 subscribers) are viewing my blog through Bloglines (see chart at right) – and this number is growing rapidly.

As much as I would love to think this ascent is due to what I write on my blog, I actually believe it is because Bloglines is attracting users in droves and is growing like a beanstalk. I have heard from some subscribers that they are ditching their desktop RSS readers in favor of Bloglines’ simplicity. As much as I love FeedDemon, I too have switched exclusively to Bloglines.

However, with great growth often comes great power. Could Bloglines one day exert the kind of control that Google does? I bet in the near future they might. Especially if they need start monetizing their users or they get swallowed up by a bigger fish.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.