Bloglines bot stops misrepresenting its number of subscribers
So I have this nasty habit of regularly checking my server logs, always wanting to see what's going on. One of the things I noticed through this is that when I signed up for a bloglines account to test some functionality (and subsequently discovered what I think was a security problem, that I probably should some day go and check up upon to see if it's still present, or if they silently fixed it without acknowledging my email), and subsequently unsubscribed, it didn't lower the number of subscribers to my atom feed. It happened a second time, too, and so I've since been taking the number with a grain of salt (though realizing it was mostly accurate, as people almost never seem to unsubscribe in real life).Just now, however, I noticed the following two lines in my log:
code:
216.148.212.188 - - [08/Nov/2005:16:56:30 +0000] "GET /atom.asp HTTP/1.1"
200 2894 "-" "Bloglines/2.1 (http://www.bloglines.com; 7 subscribers)"
65.214.39.151 - - [08/Nov/2005:19:42:38 +0000] "GET /atom.asp HTTP/1.1"
200 2894 "-" "Bloglines/3.0-rho (http://www.bloglines.com; 5 subscribers)"
Looks like they have a new version of their bot, and that it has changed from stating the number of "all subscribers who ever signed up" to just the current number. (At least, I consider it as unlikely that someone else signed up twice in the hour interval that I unsubscribed as I consider it that 29% of my bloglines-audience unsubscribed just as they changed to a new version of their bot.)
I wonder if this'll have any noticeable effect on the various online statistics of feedreader marketshare.
2005-11-22, update: Bloglines for now has gone back to using the 2.1 version of the bot, and the security problem briefly mentioned is indeed still present, as I finally went and checked up on given that Phil just made public a similar problem.
2005-12-27, update the 2nd: After going back and forth between the 2.1 and 3.0 versions of the bot, the latter has now been running for a solid week, so I guess it's been toggled for real. Bloglines changed it so that it continues to misrepresent the number of subscribers though. :/ (For that matter, most of the security problems we found over at Phil's are still present as well. Bad Bloglines! No cookie!)