Every day, Feedspikes processes a massive subscription to 1000+ RSS feeds. The feed subscription process runs continuously and guarantees that only new, unique stories are consumed throughout the day. To quantify this processing in terms of the total, unique news items coming in, or the actual news consumption rates for the site, I ran a few queries against the Feedspikes database. In this analysis, one <item> from an RSS feed is considered a news item.
From the last 4 weeks of activity, the following patterns emerge for monthly, weekly, and hourly news consumption rates:
Monthly
The monthly news stream forms a zig-zag pattern as the news item count increases gradually early in the week, reaches a peak, and then decreases steadily until the weekend. From the monthly pattern it is clear that weekends are relatively quiet for most news organizations Feedspikes subscribes to, and that the highest volume of news is consumed on Wednesday and Thursday. Following this pattern, from 7/18/11 to 8/18/11, a total of 213,775 news items were consumed by the site.
Weekly
A reverse "U" shape, the weekly news consumption pattern starts with a timid Sunday, followed by an encouraging Monday, right before a climactic mid-week when a flood of news items is released. The news item count then tapers off, gradually, through the end of the week. On the week pictured above, 7/31/11 through 8/6/11, a total of 51,813 news items were consumed.
Daily
A spike emerges from the daily news consumption pattern at around 3 pm CST (4 pm EST). After this spike, the subscription process brings in a sustained news item count throughout the afternoon, evening, and even into the night. Earlier in the day, a minor spike is seen between 8 am and 10 am. This is part of the daily pattern that occurs on nearly all of the days in the 4 week period analysed: a small, but noticeable spike in the number of new stories consumed during these hours. A total of 9,065 news items were consumed on 8/3/11.
Bottom Line:
* Weekends are quiet relative to weekdays
* Most active day of the week is Wednesday
* Most active hour of the day is 4 pm EST
Capturing these patterns helps to set expectations for what is considered "normal" feed consumption rates for the site.
