Feasting eyeballs, hidden readers

I was recently thinking about giving my blog a make over. The green paint has started peeling off the virtual walls. But after Patrix told me that he (like most avid blog readers) preferred to read my posts in the comfort of his cozy RSS reader rather than virtually traveling all the way to my grungy old blog, I realized that renovating my blog would be a pointless exercise. So I promptly enabled access to entire posts via RSS feed and began to ponder about the bloggeristic future.

Now that RSS feed is becoming the norm, is designing good looking web pages going to become a thing of the past? What about statistics on blog readership? How can the bloggers judge their blogs popularity? All technorati does is rank according to the number of referrals from other blogs and maybe page views (I am not certain) but those who are using RSS feed will not be counted by sitemeter or technorati…or will they?

I wonder if I will suffer from the empty blog syndrome ‘coz now I won’t be able to get so much as footprints of my readers in the form of sitemeter stats of number of visits and sorts. Even with a good readership following, I will still have the feeling of having a monologue with the virtual green walls. Are there ways in which I can get stats on these ghost readers? I should be entitled to get the stats on the RSS readers, after all I feed them. Or all I can do is sing…

Hello Hello Hello

Is there anybody out there?

Just click if you can read this.

Is there anyone home?

Come on, now.

I hear you’re reading posts.

If you know why I complain,

Click on the mouse again.

Relax.

I need some information first.

Just the basic stats

Can you identify yourself?

There are no stats and you are receding.

A distant ships smoke on the horizon.

You are only coming through in waves.

Your lips move but I cant hear what you’re sayin.

When I was a child I had a sitemeter.

My hands felt just like two balloons.

Now I got the stats once again.

The low visit numbers I do not understand.

This is not how I am.

I have become comfortably numb.

Ok.

Just a little mouse click. [ping]

Therell be no more --aaaaaahhhhh!

But you may feel a little sick.

Can you click again?

I do believe its working. good.

That’ll keep the stats going.

Look at the hit count grow.

There are no stats, you are receding.

A distant ships smoke on the horizon.

You are only coming through in waves.

Your lips move but I cant hear what youre sayin.

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,

Out of the corner of my eye.

I turned to look but it was gone.

I cannot put my finger on it now.

The child is grown, the stats are gone.

I have become comfortably numb.