Over the past few days many of us have seen a significant drop in our RSS subscriber count in our FeedBurner account.

The FeedBurner help group – if we can call it that way, as no one ever seems to answer – is filled with messages from users who have “lost” even thousands of subscribers overnight. What’s the answer these users get? The silent treatment. And it’s not the first time users report these drops and get no answer.

OK, we’ve seen a pattern in these drops and it involves the Google Reader subscribers. With Google Reader being probably the most popular feed subscription tool worldwide, there’s no wonder that the drop percentage ranges from 30% to 70% in some cases.

So, just for the sake of remaining optimistic about this situation, let’s presume that Google is working on a way to better integrate these two services (FeedBurner and Reader) to provide better statistics to us users.

Even so, this does not explain the lack of updates on the FeedReader Status blog or the lack on a 2 line message on the help board that would definitely calm down the spirits. And as the case is not singular, and the lack of communication seems to turn into a habit, I cannot help but thinking that ever since Google took over FeedBurner, the relationship between the project team and the users has gone from good, to bad, to worse.

A change of attitude is required in this age of instant communication, otherwise even if Google is running the service, competition will eat it up. “All this has happened before, and will happen again” as they used to say on my favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactica.

Update: After 3 or 4 days of madness on the boards, a Google team member addressed a short message confirming that the issue is related to Google’s Feedfetcher and has been reported to the responsible department. It took a while…

Update 2: An acknowledgement of the issue is finally made official on the FeedBurner blog. 3 to 4 days after users started to ask questions about it.

It’s time for a new freebie release! Here is Feedsessive, a free, simple and elegant RSS icon pack for you to use however you wish, in either personal or professional projects, with no restriction.

These days I’ve been working on a new project and I needed an RSS icon that is simple and elegant, and after designing one to use in my project, I decided to create a few variations and release them as a pack for those who might need it.

Feedsessive features 50 free RSS icons, split into 2 two design styles (basic and outlined), each with 25 color variation.

All the RSS icons are available in 3 formats:

• EPS (vector) format
• PDF format
• Transparent PNG format at 300dpi

* Packed size: 2.22 Mb
Click here to read the full blog post!

It’s a fact. Readers want RSS updates. They are easier to manage, to search and follow. And when readers wanted them, bloggers provide.

Have you ever wanted to subscribe to a blog’s feed, but no matter how much you searched, you could not find the link? It’s frustrating!

The RSS subscription box is one of the most important elements of your blog’s design. It offers a good deal of branding solutions and it can turn out to be decisive in your readers’ choice of following (or not) your updates.

Let’s observe together these 10 RSS subscription box designs and draw conclusions at the end upon the DO’s and DON’T's.
Click here to read the full blog post!

I know that for some people, time is a much more valuable asset than it is for others, so I decided that from now on – permanent – Blogsessive will publish full RSS feeds of the articles.

I hope this helps you in finding the best information by spending less time. Enjoy the feeds, and if you haven’t subscribed yet:

Subscribe to Blogsessive’s Full RSS Feed via FeedBurner

Over the past years, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has become a standard of content sharing over the web. Content publishers such as bloggers, news websites or online magazines take full advantage of its potential. What better way to allow people to stay up to date with your content without wasting time writing newsletters each day/week?

For end users, RSS facilitates keeping track of updates regularly and in an organized way through the use of RSS readers.

Bloggers know that their RSS subscribers are amongst the most loyal users of their blog and there is not a single blogger who respects his readers that does not use RSS.
Click here to read the full blog post!