As predicted, the Mashable/Pageflakes inflated stats issue was resolved. Seems the accurate number is 27K. So instead of bashing Mashable, which accomplishes nothing, what can we learn from this?

It’s good the truth came out

It is good that one site’s numbers were so outlandish it drew attention so the problem can be fixed. Yes, Mashable’s number dropped dramatically but there are sites with less readers who had inflated stats as well. If they only had 60 and dropped to 10 because of this, that’s devastating because they really thought they had 60 – that’s not a far reach. I feel for those people because they didn’t see it coming.

Talk about what’s really going on

Mike Arrington started this conversation by talking about Boing Boing, causing Ole Brandenburg from Pageflakes to respond to the Boing Boing issue, not Mashable. I knew what Mike Arrington was really talking about (I had just heard about it myself about a week before), and decided to write about it, because that’s what I do. Dick Costolo from FeedBurner was nice enough to respond in the comments and he said the issue would be fixed and it was, when he said it would be.

In my original entry, I brought up an issue I had with Mike Arrington. Mike emailed me explaining the situation and we’ve cleared that up. Thanks Mike. I updated the entry to reflect that.

When in trouble, be honest about it. That builds trust.

Dick Costolo (CEO & Co-Founder of FeedBurner) responding to this issue and having the problem fixed when he said it would be boosted my trust in FeedBurner tremendously. My readers know I detested FeedBurner and at one time dumped any site that had a FeedBurner feed so this is me eating crow. This is huge – me saying I like FeedBurner. FeedBurner earned my trust and respect. That is what Mashable is going to have to do in their community. Earn the trust and respect back. It’s going to be hard work but if FeedBurner can do it, Mashable can.

There is no excuse for laziness.

Pageflakes was unforgivably lax on this issue and due to this, unfortunately, it throws the responsibility on FeedBurner to get the numbers right. Conservative numbers are better than inflated ones. FeedBurner is considered a reliable source for stat measurement. IMO it’s more important FeedBurner get the numbers right than catering to Pageflakes or any other company. One thing that is being overlooked in the Mashable bashing is that Pageflakes continued to report ridiculously inflated numbers to FeedBurner for a long time. If Mashable is “bad”, what is Pageflakes?

If a 9rules member is doing something wrong, talk to me

It amazes me that readers realize if a 9rules member is allegedly doing something unethical they can contact me (I am Community Director) and I will get to the bottom of it. Bloggers don”t have this wisdom because I did not receive one email from a blogger – all readers. Seriously, contact me when situations like this comes up.

It’s going to happen again, then what?

So what happens if this happens again, instead of being 410K the numbers are more subtle, like adding 1K a month? Something reasonable but hard to spot? How do we stop this from happening again? That’s what we should be talking about.

Coming up next: what do you do if, as a blogger, you get yourself in a mess like this?