Companies + Social Networks + Friends =

The RSS feed doesn't show the images any more, you have to click through to the site :-(

Yeah. I'm sorry about that, Jeanette. I hope it's not too annoying. One of the problems I have is that I don't know how many readers I have. I want to put more time into my comic, but in order to do that, I need to show that I have a sizeable and growing audience. Providing a partial RSS feed and measuring repeat visits is one way to do that. The downside is that you have to click a link and wait for your browser to load. The upside is that it may allow me to spend more time on my comic.

Count me in the column that loves the picture based comics (and the tool tip type punch lines), but really hates the new feed. I am using Google Reader and the title isn't coming over, just the tool tip.It makes it harder to keep up. Isn't there a way you can count your aggregate/feed subscribers?

Sorry about that, Kathy. I can get # of RSS *deliveries* from our servers, but that's not the same as # of RSS subscribers. I've thought about using Feedburner to provide the RSS feed and metrics, but I hate the idea of asking people to subscribe to a new feed. Does anyone know of a good tool for gathering RSS metrics beside Feedburner?

I would rather subscribe to a new feed if it got me the images inline. You could do both and let the people that care move to the new feed.

I'm also getting kind of annoyed by having to click through to the comic. Couldn't you do something like embed a 1px image in your post and measure how many hits it gets?

I'd just like to say that I too preferred the previous way that images showed up directly in Outlook. I wouldn't mind changing feeds if this allows you to get your metrics and maintain the inline images.

David, i, for one, would surely subscribe to a new feed: the "old" one is essentially useless right now... :-) WM_CHEERS

-thomas woelfer

Well I'm all for the new RSS feed if it allows you to spend more time on this comic. This comic always makes me laugh!

Doing both is a really interesting idea, James. I hadn't thought of that. I'll run it by management and see what they think. Thanks!

Sorry about that, Elisabeth. Embedding a 1px image in my posts and measuring hits is kind of what I was doing before. It told me the number of times a post was viewed, but it didn't tell me how many subscribers I had, which is something I really need in order to justify spending more time on the comic.

Thanks, Simon. That's good to know.

Thanks, Thomas. That's good to know.

Thanks, Maegan. I'm definitely considering a new RSS feed.

I would happily sign up to a new feed. Currently I have to follow the link to the site then another link to flickr to get the image. Inline in RSS was so much better! I'm still viewing though David so you can let your boss know that the comic is appreciated.