Ever want your own RSS reader with your own feeds? Why would you want to do that? Well, to control what your readers see. And also to get a reader out there that has your own brand on it. I think I’ll load this on my dad’s computer so he can see my feeds.

Anyway, the reader is Snarfer.

Here’s one they created for me (this is an EXE/application that you load if you have Windows).

I can see a lot of uses for this. It’s a nice, competent, RSS aggregator — three pane style. It won’t make me give up Google Reader, but for doing a custom thing this is pretty interesting.

Yuri Ammosov, who lives in Moscow, Russia, and works in the Russian Ministry of Economics demonstrates why Russians aren’t cool.

1. He isn’t using an iPhone.
2. He isn’t using Facebook.
3. He’s reading blogs.
4. He’s running Russian RSS-reading software.
5. He reads Engadget, B5 Media, and TechCrunch.
6. He’s running Windows Mobile.

So yesterday. So uncool.

Just kidding.

Seriously, I spent a while with Yuri today and you should watch out for him and his band of Russian entrepreneurs. They are doing very cool things and I was jealous of the feed reader and the new interface he showed me on his Windows Mobile smart phone.

Now do you understand why Google announced Open Social and Android? I sure do.

There’s a lot of Russians who are going to buy cell phones and join a social network in the next 18 months. What will THEY be running? Will they think YOU are uncool for what YOU are running?

Longer interview coming soon on ScobleShow.com.

I spent a lot of time recently catching up on NewsGator. If you’re interested in the RSS world and what’s going on you should check out these two videos. In them they explain how Newsgator is making moves into the Enterprise. You can see how the approach here differs from Bloglines, who was on my show yesterday.

There are two videos.

1. A demo of the new Enterprise-focused synchronization system. Five minutes.
2. A discussion of NewsGator’s moves into the Enterprise. 21 minutes.

I included the demo on this post here, but in the interview you’ll hear RSS reading trends inside corporations. NewsGator’s stance here is unique and hearing from them about how companies are using RSS is interesting. Jeremiah Owyang, social media analyst at Forrester should check this out. We talk at length about what NewsGator’s new integration with Microsoft’s Sharepoint means and how it can be used.

NewsGator includes a variety of feed readers including FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and the various NewsGator clients. They’ve really built a system that goes way beyond what any other feed reading system does.

Eric Engleman, general manager of Bloglines shows me the latest in what Bloglines is doing for RSS Feed Readers. Geeks might not care, but this is a good video to pass to people who haven’t yet gotten on the RSS bandwagon. I mention that the BBC does the best job of explaining feeds to its readers.

I use Google Reader, but still have my Bloglines account and if you’re going to read feeds in a folder-by-folder approach Bloglines is better than Google Reader in managing your feeds. Anyway, it’s good to see that Bloglines is still there coming out with new stuff for people who read feeds.

Oh, and over on ScobleShow is a bunch of videos from last week’s CTIA show. Tons of mobile gadgets and services.

One of the slams I saw yesterday after we started posting Google Reader’s feed numbers is that “nobody reads RSS.”

Today, Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch, gave us some more numbers so we can extrapolate out just how many people actually are using RSS.

First, let’s start with the BBC. That’s the #1 most subscribed to feed on Google Reader that I can find.

Google Reader is reporting that 1,387,559 are subscribed to the News Front Page and another 824784 are subscribed to the UK Edition.

Let’s just call that two million people. Yeah, I know that many people are probably subscribed to both feeds, but let’s just go with it to make the math simple.

Now let’s make an assumption. Let’s say that half of all Google Readers are subscribed to the BBC. That means about four million people are using Google Reader.

Using the data from TechCrunch we see that Google counts for about 38% of all people using a feed reader. Let’s just round that to 40%. That means about 10 million people use RSS. Or probably less if my assumptions above prove to be too liberal.

So, why so small? And why does the world care about the behaviors of only 10 million people (out of six billion).

A few reasons.

First, getting 10 million users isn’t too shabby.

Second, I never expected RSS to get as popular as Paris Hilton.

Third, what’s the real power of RSS? The news influencers use it. So, if you want to reach the Paris Hilton crowd you’ve probably gotta go through someone who uses an RSS aggregator. Most of the journalists and almost all of the bloggers I know use RSS.

But, anyway, is 10 million a good or bad number? Why?

UPDATE: Alex Barrera says he asked FeedBurner reported to him that they have 65.6 million subscribers.

It’s 8 a.m.

I started reading feeds at 6:45 a.m.

So far this morning I’ve dug through 1,174 posts, including about 300 press releases on PR Newswire, across 891 feeds.

I’ve shared 27 of those items on my link blog.

I’ve been challenged to think different by Tim O’Reilly.
I found two new kickass videos by the Digital Ethnography crew at Kansas State.
Got 20 search engine marketing tools.
And a whole lot more.

But, back to Tim O’Reilly. He writes about how the top bloggers get more audience while everyone else goes lacking. He explains that he looks for ideas in different places than just the obvious places. That’s a great explanation of why I read so many feeds. I find so much high quality stuff in my feeds that never makes it to TechMeme or gets linked to by any other blogger.

But, back to the videos. Here’s a vision of students today from Kansas State. This class just is so cool but the kids make me so sad — it costs about $80 an hour to sit in class in a modern University. It’s amazing that kids spend so much resources just to goof off. I shouldn’t talk, though. Reading feeds isn’t exactly what I’m getting paid to do. :-)

One PR teacher I met recently told me how she’s frustrated by her students because they’d rather read up on Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan than apply themselves and study about something that would actually change the world. But, that does lead to certain marketing opportunities. Here the NYTimes has an article about a new celebrity TV show that’s getting big ratings.

On the other hand, what a joy a great teacher is and this Kansas class certainly has a good one.

Thanks everyone for the higher quality information.

UPDATE: This list is no longer accurate. Google updated the numbers last night and they all changed pretty dramatically. I’ll update the list later this week when I have time.

Darren Rowse on ProBlogger showed me how to look up how many subscribers I have on Google Reader.

So, I went looking for some numbers.

Keep in mind that these are ONLY for Google Reader, which is only a small percentage of subscribers (although a growing number).

First, though, let’s look at the TechMeme Leaderboard. The numbers of Google Reader subscribers are in parenthesis.

1. TechCrunch (Google Reader says: 117,690 subscribers on one URL, 11,470 on another — this is for US site)
2. New York Times (33,159 for front page, 5,298 for top 10 most emailed items)
3. Engadget (146,449, it lists a number of others too — compare to only 28,289 for Gizmodo)
4. Ars Technica (about 19,000 in quick add up of all their feeds)
5. CNET News.com (14,395)
6. Read/WriteWeb (8,479)
7. The Register (5,826 for main feed, 1,208 for headlines)
8. GigaOM (5,393 subscribers, plus 1,840 for ommalik feed)
9. Silicon Alley Insider (unknown)
10. Computerworld (1,341 for breaking news, 1,959 for top news)
11. InfoWorld (889 for TechWatch blog, 4,384 for top news)
12. eWEEK.COM (5,021 for tech news, about 1,000 for other feeds)
13. Wall Street Journal (2,033 subscribers)
14. Associated Press (532 subscribers)
15. paidContent.org (401 subscribers)
16. AppleInsider (16,326. Compare to 16,646 for MacRumors)
17. BBC (202,463 for front page, 6,971 for Tech)
18. Crave: The gadget blog (3,136)
19. Search Engine Land (3,910, none for new Sphinn)
20. Reuters (4,006 for top news)
21. BusinessWeek (7,209, 3,617 for tech)
22. Bits, New York Times tech Blog (212)
23. Techdirt (12,628)
24. Webware.com (4,071)
25. TorrentFreak (981)
26. Between the Lines (1,588)
27. CrunchGear (4,190)
28. CenterNetworks (254)
29. All About Microsoft (542)
30. VentureBeat (1,138)
31. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (15,457)
32. Gizmodo (28,289)
33. Scripting News (7,594 for Dave Winer’s main blog and 339 for his annex)
34. Rough Type, Nick Carr (1,801)
35. Microsoft (MSDN Blogs where employees blog, 1,357; MSDN magazine, 1,413, Microsoft Research, 2,276, MSDN just published, 5,452, Microsoft’s press releases, 463. Compare to Mini-Microsoft, 3,246. There are a variety of others, but none higher than these)
36. BoomTown + Kara Swisher + AllThingsD (1,325 on Huffington Post, 377 on AllThingsD, 124 on BoomTown)
37. Wired News (104,159 for top stories, 4,291 for science, 2,729 for gadgets. Compare to Google News, which has 192,100).
38. mathewingram.com/work (18)
39. Business Wire (I couldn’t find data here)
40. Scobleizer (600 for ScobleShow, 4894 for Scobleizer, 29 to my Twitter feed,
41. NewTeeVee (1,439)
42. Tech Trader Daily (360)
43 A VC (Fred Wilson) (4,053)
44. PR Newswire (254)
45. Publishing 2.0 (1,270)
46. Forbes (1,058 on Tech News)
47. DailyTech (about 5,500 on main news feed)
48. Epicenter, Wired blog (351)
49. O’Reilly Radar (13,345)
50. Los Angeles Times (415 for top news, 947 for local, 935 for print edition)
51. Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog (597)
52. Times of London (988 for UK News from Times Online)
53. All Facebook (196)
54. Valleywag (5897)
55. Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim (1,656)
56. Inquirer (4,908)
57. WebProNews (about 500)
58. The Jason Calacanis Weblog (2,809)
59. Google LatLong (2,210)
60. ZDNet (930)
61. Download Squad (9,095)
62. Google Operating System (12,284)
63. Official Google Blog (71,283 — the Google Reader blog has 49,242)
64. The Boy Genius Report (1,629)
65. Guardian (7,448, 1,750 on World Latest)
66. PC World (2,279 on latest technology news)
67 Google Blogoscoped (41,387)
68. Infinite Loop (1,987)
69. Macworld (10,545, 843 in top stories)
70. Digital Daily (see Kara Swisher above)
71. Istartedsomething (380)
72. Mashable! (8,763)
73. Engadget Mobile (5,673 for mobile feed)
74. 9 to 5 Mac (76)
75. Guardian Unlimited (7448, 1,750 for World Latest)
76. Financial Times (638. Compare to 176,814 for MarketWatch.com)
77. Yodel Anecdotal, Yahoo’s blog (1,050)
78. MediaShift (784)
79. Yahoo! Search Blog (3,509)
80. Washington Post (5,197, 3,502 for politics)
81. Inside AdSense (4,325)
82. Broadcasting & Cable (63)
83. Akihabaranews.com (226)
84. Google Public Policy Blog (1,397)
85. comScore (526)
86: the::unwired (458)
87: ProBlogger Blog Tips (4,586)
88. Think Secret (10,610)
89. BuzzMachine (Jeff Jarvis) (3,166)
90. Agence France Presse (514)
91. ILounge (4,651)
92. Sprint (I couldn’t find)
93. DigiTimes (474)
94. ipodminusitunes (unknown)
95. Doc Searls Weblog (1,397)
96. Reflections of a Newsosaur (22)
97. Googling Google (1,268)
98. Salon (53,909)
99. Insider Chatter (51)
100. Telegraph (1,260)

TechMeme itself has 10,179.

I also picked some of my favorites to see how they rank
Tantek Celik (402)
Shelley Powers (105)
Tara Hunt (1,083)
Jeremiah Owyang (463)
Scott Beale (1,412)
Rodney Rumford (184)
Blognation (5)
Betsy Devine (73)
danah boyd (2,172)
Shel Israel (552)
Chris Pirillo (2,795)
Stephanie Booth (142)
Daily Kos (7,285)
Daring Fireball (10,878)
Darren Barefoot (359)
Derek Powazek (99)
A List Apart (10,542)
Ryan Stewart (478)
Don Dodge (1,324)
Dare Obasanjo (2,261)
Renee Blodget (178)
Ed Bott (1,113)
Michael Gartenberg (475)
Howard Lindzon (257)
Robert Cringley (5,948)
Jeff Clavier (768)
Jeffrey Zeldman (7,459)
John Battelle (35,976)
Joel Spolsky (26,911)
Tim O’Reilly (10,422)
Joi Ito (1,444)
Jon Udell (3,343)
Loic Le Meur (1,538)
Marc Canter (582)
Dave McClure (122)
Steve Rubel (7,676)
Matt Mullenweg (1,990)
Nick Bradbury (1,287)
Noah Kagan (123)
Paul Boutin (143)
Scott Guthrie (5,511)
Tom Raftery (227)
Thomas Hawk (720)
Uncov (754)
Quotationspage.com: (128,748)
Channel 9 (Microsoft’s video community) (2,268)
Leo Laporte (TwiT.TV, 2,854)
Kevin Rose (389)
Digg (14,247 to Digg/Tech; 109,286 for all News and Videos)
Jonathan Schwartz (3796)
Sun’s blogs (161)
Mark Cuban (8,436)
Guy Kawasaki (7,534)
Seth Godin (36,822)
Tom Peters (2,153)

MediaBlitz has its own analysis of the TechMeme leaderboard numbers. Basically it looks like only 5% of the average blog is read in an RSS reader so multiply these numbers by 20 and you’ll probably get close to real traffic levels.

Tim Bray reminds us that these numbers are ONLY for people who subscribed to the feeds in Google Reader. On his server he has 1,455 subscribers for his RSS, 4,403 for his atom feed, while Google Reader reported 3,690 for his feeds.

I’d love to know how many subscribers you have. Can you look your numbers up and put them in a comment? Remember to add up all the various feeds you have (that’s how I got these numbers above).

Enjoy!

The next step? What are you learning here? For one the BBC is one of the only sites that puts “about News Feeds” next to all of its feed icons (they link to a well done page about how to use News Feeds). Any wonder why they get so many subscribers?

UPDATE: Fred Oliveira says that Feed Burner is reporting to him that he has 2,445 subscribers from Google Reader but Google Reader says that Fred only has 524 subscribers from Google Reader. So, these numbers may be WAY off. But they are the data I had to work with. Would love to hear your stories. Tim Bray says he’s seeing a discrepancy too.

UPDATE #2: I might have missed some of your numbers. I tried to find them all, but please correct what you find if you find some that I missed.

UPDATE: #3: One thing you can’t look up? How many subscribers you have to my Google Reader Shared Items Blog.

UPDATE: #4: TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington was doing something similar. I need to go to dinner, otherwise I’d put my list in a spreadsheet like that.

I’m already getting sick of all the talk that the Jaiku acquisition by Google means the death of Twitter. Of course where is this talk happening? Twitter! Heh.

Tim O’Reilly put it right: Jaiku’s strength wasn’t as a competitor to Twitter at all. It was the mobile presence and aggregation features that I liked over on Jaiku. Jaiku has a mobile client, in particular, that’s really great.

The more troubling thing is that Google acquires companies and then we never hear about these companies again. Will that happen to Jaiku? I hope not.

As Jonathan Davies says, Jaiku’s other strength is in aggregating RSS feeds into one place. Interesting that Google is building a very strong position in the RSS ecosystem with Google Reader and Feedburner and now Jaiku. Interesting, will Google use its RSS position against Facebook? We’ll see come November 5.

Imagine if Google made a more open social networking tool than Facebook all via RSS feeds? Stick that into your RSS feed reader and smoke it!

Anyway, I’ve had a Jaiku account for a while and like it. Hope to see what they do next.

Interesting debate over on ProBlogger.

I’ve made my position very clear in the past: I far prefer full text feeds.

Lots of interesting posts caused by the Singularity Summit going on today.

I wish I were there, but we’re enjoying our Saturday before baby coming.

Anyone else think that the singularity is coming because of our RSS readers?

Oh, funny, Kevin Schofield (he works up at Microsoft Research) links to a report that subcutaneous RFID chips cause cancer.

So, doesn’t look good for chip implants coming anytime soon.

You know, one of my goals is to have my own personal “FooCamp” every single day of the rest of my life.

Looking at my link blog I’m already there. I have more than 4,000 smart people on my RSS feed that I get to listen to.

Add in my job where I get to have conversations every day.

I have a feeling next week is going to be a great week. Our new son is due. When will Milan arrive? Who knows but he’ll never know a world without feeds. Imagine that.

Patrick, who now is 13, will never know a world without Netscape (now Firefox).

Isn’t it an exciting time to be alive? The world’s smartest people write to you every day.

Or, just watch TED Talks.

I love this song by Vusi Mahlasela.

Who needs the singularity?

It’s already here, coursing through our RSS aggregators.

UPDATE: Renee Blodget is blogging the Singularity Summit and sharing photos.