Walking up on a sleepy Sunday where the clock was just set back one hour for Daylight Savings Time (which I actually wrote about last week) only to find out my RSS Subscribers were just cut in half ….. I had 1905 Subscribers on Friday while on Saturday (whose stats I see Sunday morning) it's now 1120 - that kind of decrease is not plausible - 10% yes, almost 100% - simply not possible.

So…. I started looking at other Know More Media Blogs and found they all had their RSS numbers of subscribers more or less halved as well.  Whew…it's not just me.   But to be sure that Google is not penalizing my blog network (one can never know about Google anymore these days - they're turning into something quite different - nothing they do anymore is just about helping us search better - the equation has entirely changed as Google has acted more and more imperialistic - and therefore - nothing that happens where Google is involved - and Google owns Feedburner - can now be just dismissed as technical issue - we have to accept that, perhaps, Feedburner halved numbers deliberately…because, perhaps, Google suddenly decided they were inflated …or something like that - and acted).

Anyway - I checked around to other bloggers who I respect, like Valeria Maltoni's Conversation Agent and found her numbers halved as well.   Ok…now we know it an action that is affecting more than my blog network (maybe Google's done penalizing blogs that do too well for traffic by their own measures for the time being - at least, I can only hope that's the case).

So who else noticed this problem today - and I search my Google Reader and found Did Your Feedburner Subscribers Just Get Halved? by Deep Jive Interests, a really interesting blogger living in Toronto who is also a medical doctor (which I find amazing - that he can balance those two things as well as he does) and Tony found the RSS Subscriber count issue before I did.  Here's what Tony has to say:

"….Well, for reasons that have yet to be explained, my Feedburner subscribers were just halved.  I actually noticed it first on Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch, as his numbers are “way down” too — from 600k to about 300k; however, it seems like its everywhere else as well.  Mat Ingram’s blog: 1600 to 1100, and Stan Shroeder’s FranticIndustries down to 1200 from 2000. (I’d quote others, but those are the only ones whose pre-drop numbers I recall).

While I don’t care as much as much about my subscriber count as I used to, I will admit that I’m still interested in the whys.  Let’s all remember that Feedburner is now owned by Google, who has been in the news for all kinds of things; second of all, Google has a history of being rather opaque with their reasonings.  Thirdly, everyone’s stats actually *doubled* about 8 months ago ago pre-Google ownership as Feedburner was starting to recognize Google reader stats.

Is the halving a bug, or is there a new downward adjustment that we’re not being told about?

{but I suspect that in a few hours everyone *will* be buzzing about?}"

How about Techcrunch - they had 605,000 Subscribers Friday and yesterday, Saturday, they had 394,000 Subscribers.

Ok, we're talking about a little less than 100% - but it's still a big deal and I'll be interested to hear what others are experiencing here and what the cause/solution ends up being later today or Monday.    Fact is - Google has to say something via FeedBurner.   They can say…ops! we made a mistake and the numbers are back up on Monday and Tuesday …or they could say…..we incorrectly upped you RSS Subscriber numbers 8 months ago and now they are corrected - we've decided they're too high and now we understand why that is - so we decided to correct the problem.

Now the problem for us - for all of us - happens if Google does the latter - because they're now, pretty much, in control of almost everything ….. if they decide something is right ….. it's right, as far as they're concerned, and if they decide some thing is wrong, or they made a mistake, the take action, and it's corrected - as far as they are concerned.

Actually, I think it's just a technical glitch that will be corrected in a day or two - so I'm more optimistic than pessimistic.  I just want to lay out the possibility that this is a deliberate action by Google-FeedBurner to correct, what they think, is an inaccuracy they created.  We'll know for sure in a day or so, for sure.