Of the blogs I follow, many of them often have ‘Delurking Days’, where the blogger will ask readers who normally don’t comment to leave a comment to say ‘Hi!” and let them know that they follow the blog.
I’m guilty of that. I read many blogs and only comment once in a while. I’m working on commenting more. Baby steps 
I think I’ve learned why people do that. I’ve learned that if I read someone’s blog using a reader, my ‘visit’ doesn’t show up as a hit on their counter. Only if I actually visit the blog itself will I be counted. So theoretically speaking, a person could have a thousand readers a day, but if they all used readers, it would look to the owner that no one is reading their posts.
I think that when bloggers ask people to delurk, they are trying to find out how many readers they really have.
Since starting to use Brief, there are a lot of blogs that I will read right from the reader – but there are still a bunch that I will always go to the actual blog page. Mostly because I like their template or layout, and to me that enhances the experience of reading the post.
I have two thoughts that come out of this:
1. I feel guilty now when I read a blog post right from the reader because I’m gipping the blogger of a visitor count
2. I can now pretend that I have hundreds of people that follow my blog, but I don’t see them on my counter because they use a reader
