How do bloggers and probloggers cheat on their feed counts?

Bloggers and probloggers are fond of showing off their big fat feed counts on their blogs. They normally do that by placing cute little widgets provided by Feedburner, Feedblitz or many other feed syndication and subscription service providers. Many of their feed counts are genuine but some are plain hoaxes!

Since this subject is hot right now, allow me, a stupid blogger blogging on a free blogging platform share some disgusting facts about blogs, bloggers, probloggers and their precious feed counts. Let me show you how some bloggers and probloggers pump up or cheat on their feed counts.

Image manipulations

This is probably the simplest exploit known to bloggers and probloggers. It is stupid but really easy. It involves screen capturing, capturing an image of a fat feed count widget taken from some other popular blog. Using plain HTML, the hoaxer will then weave his filthy magic and make the whole thing look real on his or her own blog.

The dumbest exploiters are those who do hotlinking. NetBusinessBlog Dot Com has a good story on this.

Emails & Self-Subscriptions

This is the most popular exploit for greedy bloggers and probloggers. It is very easy to do but takes a lot of time. It involves creating hundreds and thousands of new email accounts and then uses them to subscribe to their own feeds.

Some bloggers even bragged about it on some forums! WTF!?

Taking advantage of loopholes

This is probably the most guarded kind of exploit, kept under the radar by many bloggers and probloggers. Those in the know will only share them with their close friends.

However, some of their secrets leaked out and so far I have heard of bloggers and probloggers taking advantage of loopholes in Bloglines, Google Gadgets, Pageflakes and many other new Web 2.0 sites. Such loopholes enable them to pump up their feed counts astronomically! Thanks to TechCrunch Dot Com and TheNextWeb Dot Org, I found that there is a new secret blown to stardom right now. Check out the following video.

Feedburner hacked! from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

Reports from the Web have it that the exploit is no longer working. So, don’t waste your time, folks! :-)

The whole thing is really stupid. It makes you wonder why bloggers and probloggers want to show off their big feed counts in the first place.

Is it wrong to say that those who show off their fat feed counts are actually cheaters and hoaxers?

You may draw your own conclusions, folks! :-)