Do you display your feed count?

There is a small debate going on about displaying or not the feed count on blogs. Maki from Dosh Dosh created a meme around this question titled “Studying the Impact of Feed Count on Blog Feed Subscription”.

Some readers are more likely to subscribe to a blog if it has a large subscriber base. This is probably true because a large feed count somehow validates the readability and worth of a blog in some way.

I completely agree with Maki here, but while I find that this is a good reason to display the feed count he defends the opposite, arguing that the feed count could motivate some readers to subscribe due to the “social factor”, and he prefers his readers to subscribe uniquely for the quality of his content.

In my opinion, even if readers get initially motivated to subscribe if they see a big subscriber base, in the long run, they will remain subscribed only if the content is worth it, so the equation remains intact.

Finally, just like a large feed count can encourage readers to subscribe to your blog a very low count might discourage them from doing it. In my opinion, therefore, one should wait until reaching a couple hundred RSS subscribers before displaying it.