Not going to lie: I'd been plenty confident that our new team feeds for the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates would succeed.

Also not going to lie: I didn't think it'd come this quickly.

All three of our main feeds launched this past Sunday and, in the span of the five-plus days since then, they accounted for 23.4% of all of our traffic to the app and site if one excludes the home page itself. Meaning that, once a reader was on the home page, with all the choices we offer, nearly a quarter of all next taps/clicks went to one of the three feeds.

Put into rawer numbers, the total page views for the feeds was 50,308. Or the rough equivalent of 10 of my own columns.

They were read. They drew discussion. And they drew as much positive feedback as any feature we've added around here in recent memory. That was both in the comments and in emails that were sent this way imploring us to continue the practice.

We'll do that. They're here to stay. And actually, along the way, they're only going to get better:

• Stoked about all the usage, I went to Adam Bertram, our developer at BoomPress, and implored him to add, as soon as he can, mechanisms to embed YouTube videos, GIFs and other fun elements. And by that, I don't just mean us. I mean you. He conceded that the latter element might take time, but he sounded confident about the other embeds.

• Many readers complained that the main feed portion doesn't allow for an increase in font size, as the rest of our app does. Adam's making that top priority. Shouldn't take long on this one.

• From a staff/reporting standpoint, we've all got a long way to go to get good at this, myself included. I was doing stuff on there later in the week that I wasn't earlier in the week, once I got more comfortable with the format, with the community's participation, etc. (For example, staying up with some of you on the Penguins Feed to watch that four-OT marathon between the Hurricanes and Panthers.) This doesn't happen overnight.

Obviously, I'm scratching the surface on this subject. There's a ton we can do.

Oh, and here's something else: Over the past week, we produced a ton of original, ambitious material on the Pirates, our only in-season team, plus eight full-length analyses each on Steelers and Penguins, plus two each on Pitt and Penn State. That's ... way, way above what we've tended to do in the past. And as several readers pointed out, it offered so many more good-read options each morning.

That, of course, is the real goal here. We're good at analysis, good at interviews. When we stake out a subject, we'll plant a flag in it pretty firmly. I'm proud of that. It's how I'd like for people to think of this place.

The feeds are there to be fast, sometimes fun. We'll let you know what's going on, including when it comes from other outlets, and we'll do it in a way that has you trusting us to stay on top of it. But from there, we'll invest the time, the thought and the energy to deliver articles that are legitimately subscription-worthy.

Thanks yet again to everyone who's sent feedback, both in the past week and beforehand.

Should the feeds have their own buttons on the app?

Are there online community activities/events we can have on the feed?

Still happy to hear more!

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