At the beginning of 2009 - Anne is a Man's rss following

When 2008 started, my RSS following was floating around 10 readers per day. This amount has risen over the year, especially over the last weeks.

The number, though not exact, is an indicator of the amount of permanent readers my blog has. On the last day of the year, there were 110.

There are a couple of funny things about the number. It can sharply vary from day to day, though the weekly average is very stable and has been going up steadily. Those who read the blog through RSS, are likely to read within their reader, so that they actually drop out of the web statistics that are collected for the blog pages. That last number has gone up as well and its rise preceded the rise in RSS readers. I have seen that before and it makes sense: a reader first finds the blog over the web and then after a couple of visits decided to follow through RSS.

More:
What is RSS; explanatory video,
Follow Anne is a Man through RSS - instructions.