It only took seven-and-a-half years. As of today File 770 has 100 followers, people who are signed up to be notified whenever there is a new post.
It’s still a modest number but not as modest as before I started the puppy roundups. Then File 770 had about 25 followers.
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Proudly one of the 25.
File770 Minion #… er… < 100.
When the internet was new, they promised us unlimited access to hundreds of millions of viewers. And the reality is that we actually have a hundred (period) we have achieved something. Some people seem to have millions of viewers, but it hardly seems different from the old days when it was only Charles Schultz or Ian Fleming who had that kind of luck.
Theo Pratt rang. He’s sure you’re falsifying your web traffic.
thanks for the reminder to unsubscribe.
i was pointed here as this being a neutral place for news on the puppy issues, but experience has shown that this is not the case. Yes, the links are to everything from all sides, but the selected quotes of the works frequently leads to the picture that you would get from reading the roundups being very different from what you get if you actually click through and read the original material.
and the bulk of the commenter’s here are extremely partisan
And there’s some of us who use RSS instead of email updates
If David Lang unsubscribes, then Mike’s at 99 and once someone signs up he can celebrate 100 all over again tomorrow.
It’s Chapters 5 all over again!
(I’m also an RSSer. I suspect email updates aren’t a very popular method of following nowadays)
I use RSS, myself. If I subscribed to be emailed whenever there was a new post from everywhere I read, I wouldn’t have room for the regular mail!
RSS FTW! There is no easy – and accurate – metrics for that, I think.
If David Lang unsubscribed, I’m glad to subscribe.
Then there’s those of us who refresh so often we take down the website during the Hugo ceremony 🙂
These days, I just assume that there’s always something new at File770, thereby rendering such notifications superfluous.
The Puppies are what done it. Prior to them, I checked in here fewer than a handful of times a year.
Also: Congratulations!
Congrats! Am one of those following through RSS (Feedly!), though of late I seem to checking this site more often than my aggregator.
I wonder why?
I use RSS through Dreamwidth but also simply pull the site up to check oh six to ten times a day. After all there are the comments to keep up with. I do not have them sent by email because I get too much email already.
I just refresh. And refresh. And wonder how the heck so many people could post overnight. And refresh again….
(What I would love would be a much longer “recent posts” list so I could more easily notice when a small thread or an old thread that *isn’t* open in a tab gets a reply….)
I use RSS in Feedly, which says you have 350 readers.
(for comparison purposes, my blog has only 14 readers in Feedly)
I also use feedly, and I’d never noticed that reader count til today. I’m guessing it’s feedly-only, not the whole RSS feed.
Laura, 1 of those is me!
ETA: Scalzi has 10k in feedly, Stross 7k, Popehat 1k. Slightly lower down, Aaron has 4 and Camestros has 6, so you’re in the lead!
@Mark: Yes, that’s feedly only. Because of the way that RSS works, there’s not a simple public-facing way to find out how many people use it. OGH can probably figure it out from traffic numbers, but it takes some doing.
Lurker who didn’t know you could do that–off to sign up!
Um … is not a milestone something you hang around your neck?
Anyway, I continue to prefer e-mail notifications going to my main desktop computer. It is like having a real telephone which has a cord going into the wall or a real camera – I use the proper item when I need it and I am not enslaved to a damned toy which has only one virtue – it is portable. This way I can get away from computers, telephones, and cameras when I want to.
Hey! I love my computers – which is why I have six of them – but I like being able to leave all of them at home when I want to visit a friend and not be bothered by a damned toy in my pocket wanting the attention I am giving to my friend. Yes, I do have a laptop computer – two of them, in fact – but I take a laptop to LASFS to take Board of Directors minutes (as I am Board Secretary), record APA-L and DE PROFUNDIS items, and keep in touch with my Board Gaming Meetup home page when I am running my Friday Evening gaming session at LASFS. In other words, they are useful tools. And, like all tools, when I am finished with them I like to be able to put them away and not have to carry them around with me everywhere.
Anyway, I guess I am one of the 25 – and I am glad to remain here.
Lorcan: “And there’s some of us who use RSS instead of email updates.”
Yep. Doesn’t work so well for the comment feed, but the story feed is great.
Shameless pitch for NewsBlur for anyone who’s new to RSS.
David Lang:
Say, I’ve experienced that myself. Just the other day, one of the pro-puppy quotes was talking about some of the common ground we ALL have, and seemed to be opening the conversation back up to talking about the awesome SFF out there, and the large amount of it that actually overlaps puppy and and many other fans’ tastes. I was moved to click through to his blog to join the conversation. But the first (unquoted) 3/4 of that guy’s blog post was all hatey-hate-hate on the vast variety of fandom who aren’t puppies. Sigh.
Proud refresher.
@ Marty
no, that’s millstone, not milestone.
I don’t even bother with the RSS feeds anymore. I just, as a default, access file770.com in my morning net sites roundup (and more often during the day if the balrog jokes are decent).
I have followed File770 for years via its rss feeds. First I used Bloglines, then when Bloglines died I switched to Google Reader and then when Google Reader was shut down I switched to The Old Reader.
But then I probably still have some paper copies of File770 in a box somewhere.
And my Gravatar photo is from 5 years ago, which is how long I think that I’ve had a Gravatar.
Ah these kids today who think that they’ve discovered something new! 🙂
I have 770 on RSS for the actual articles, but those little tickboxes for the let-me-know-if-there’s-a-followup-comment don’t seem to work for me, I never get emails…
Just wanted to say that I read your website every day. Began visiting for Hugo-kerfuffle news, hung around for everything else. I will never subscribe because I never read my personal email. I can’t be the only one!
I visit at least twice a day. And I do mean “at least”. It ought to count for something.
Refreshers unite!
Congratulations Mike! I don’t subscribe because if I did I’d never get any work done. I do check the site at least twice a day though!
i just read the site once a day, rather than getting notifications. I really don’t need more emails.
How do I sign up?
I just realised I’d never confirmed the subscription, so, er, I guess mine just countered David Lang unsubscribing.
@Al the Great and Powerful
The ticky boxes under the comment box.
(Sneaking this in: Kevin Standlee has weighed in on the Best Editor debates, so interested parties will want to check that out.)
I would only subscribe to a blog that posts a lot less often than you do. I just come over to the website and check frequently. There’s almost always something new to read.
Another one who uses Feedly for the articles and email for the comments …..
@Meredith – Thanks! We’ll see how long this will last… given the volume here I might end up reading the web instead, but I’m stepping up to the firehose now.
I suspect you’ll get the next 100 a bit faster. I subscribed in April and I wish I’d done so sooner, as the articles are fascinating.
Congrats. I’m still an old-fashioned email subscriber which may be why I rarely make it through my email. I visit a few times a day. Started reading when you were doing the puppy round-ups. I’ve stayed due to all the great books people talk about and other things you post abou.
RSS follower here, and another shoutout for Newsblur.
Mike, I do wish you could offer something like Automatic Comment Subscribe though. Is there a plugin for that?
@Al the Great and Powerful
I usually leave subscribing to comments on any individual post until the thread has died down, so I can close the tab without missing anything, but in the mean time I don’t end up with 1000 comment emails. Mainly because I don’t keep up with my email as it is!
I don’t subscribe or use RSS: I’m hardcore, I have the site BOOKMARKED.
I hadn’t signed up, I just come read it every single day.
There are wordpress plugins for almost everything. The trouble is that the vast majority of them are coded by people who either don’t know or don’t care about security. Installing one of those opens you up to some lovely hacks.
My favorite was one that looked at the user agent of the incoming request to decide if it would serve you the page you were expecting or a page full of links to viagra sellers. Google got the viagra links, everyone else got the normal page so you didn’t know anything was wrong until search results for your site began returning bad results.
I’m personally a big fan of outsourcing the commenting sections to a third party. Disqus is hugely popular, but Discourse (used over at BoingBoing) is awesome in many ways.
Both of these options have costs, of course, either in actual money or knowledge/time/support. I’ve never seen an ad on file770, so I’m not exactly sure how Mike funds the site. $100/month might be nothing or it might be huge.
I come here daily, but I never figured out RSS and don’t have a subscription (I try to keep my inbox clear, otherwise it starts stressing me out.) The lurkers really do support you in email!
Greg: I come here daily, but I never figured out RSS and don’t have a subscription (I try to keep my inbox clear, otherwise it starts stressing me out.)
Try igHome. It’s a 3rd-party Start page substitute for iGoogle, which was discontinued at the end of 2013. It allows you to add gadgets and RSS feeds simply by supplying the blog/site URL. I love it — but I usually only access the Internet via desktop and tablet computers because I hate the tiny screen on my smartphone. I don’t know how it looks on a mobile device.
Mike, File770.com is my home page, and has been for years. Thanks for your commitment to fandom.
I just come here a lot. Moreso since Puppies, but as another person who has nominated/voted for File 770 over the years and may also have a paper copy from the 80’s somewhere in a box, I am kind of new and kind of old.
I can’t seem to find a WordPress “Subscribe” button, though. That would make it easier for me since I check on my WP subscriptions once a day.
I’m a habitual refresher. I don’t need no stinkin’ RSS. Also, when’s the next paper/PDF issue due? I like the longer form journalism (and con reports) contained therein.