Thank you to my readers

I read about how Google Reader has changed its reporting methods so that many Feedburner users have seen a spike in their number of subscribers. Before that happened, though, I had already noticed a gradual increase in subscribers over the past few months. Reading Technosailor’s post prompted me to check on my own feed subscription rates. Previously I was bordering on the 90+ mark. On Saturday I had 111 subscribers. On Thursday I hit a high of 129.
According to the breakdown, there are now 27 people subscribing to my feed using Google Reader. That probably contributed to the jump from double to triple digits. Hurrah!
Incidentally, someone came up to me and commented, “Your blog has improved!”. The person had not seen my blog for probably a few months.
I was thinking that perhaps the quality of my content had improved. Or perhaps it was the increased frequency of posts. Or maybe the use of more photos on my home page. On a more obscure line of thought, I wondered if it was due to the displaying of photographs of my visitors using MyBlogLog, which could give a sense of ‘community’ on my blog.
Apparently, what impressed the person was the Snap preview effect when you hover over a link. It’s a feature that I installed on my blog in 2 minutes flat (from signing up to inserting the code in my template and republishing my blog).
Which shows there are different ways to hook readers. We just need to know what type of readers we want to attract.
A few weeks ago, another friend commented that she doesn’t read my blog sometimes because it’s too technical. A few years ago, yet another friend said I should have conversely been more ‘esoteric’. I did not change then, and I’m not going to change now. This is how I think, and this is how I will write. You can’t please everyone but you can be true to yourself.
Thank you to my 100+ subscribers. That means a lot to me.
[Update 26/2/07: 137 today!]