Less than two months ago, Ask.com — currently in charge of Bloglines — said the service would be shuttered in a matter of weeks. Today, Ask says Bloglines will be taken over by MerchantCircle, the online small business network that counts Ask’s parent company, IAC, as a major investor.

But while the headline says “Bloglines Lives!,” the stats show otherwise; Bloglines usage — and RSS usage in general — is reported to be in serious decline. Shortly after the initial Bloglines announcement in September, paidContent reported new statistics from both Hitwise and comScore about Bloglines and Google Reader usage:

Hitwise, for instance, tells us that visits to Google Reader are down 27 percent year-over-year, while visits to Bloglines are down 71 percent year-over-year. comScore figures show that traffic to Bloglines has largely stagnated.

In fact, even Ask’s announcement two months ago basically threw RSS under the proverbial bus:

Today RSS is the enabling technology – the infrastructure, the delivery system. RSS is a means to an end, not a consumer experience in and of itself. As a result, RSS aggregator usage has slowed significantly, and Bloglines isn’t the only service to feel the impact. The writing is on the wall.

Either MerchantCircle isn’t seeing the same writing or, more likely, they have plans to change Bloglines’ primary focus from a typical RSS reader into something else. While Ask’s announcement says MerchantCircle is committed to existing Bloglines users, it doesn’t take a great leap to imagine the company evolving Bloglines into some kind of content alert system within the company’s network of small business owners.

Postscript: In its press release, MerchantCircle hints about how it plans to change Bloglines to fit its small/local business audience:

MerchantCircle will promote the service to its more than 1.4 million local business members through their account dashboards by integrating pre-created RSS feeds that deliver targeted content on their local areas and industries. Existing Bloglines users will also have an opportunity be exposed to blog content tailored to their locale. Providing local content will be a key element to the future of Bloglines. This will include new deals and specials from local business owners in a particular city.

MerchantCircle says it will take over Bloglines on December 1st.

In addition to this announcement, Bloglines announced the release of a new skin to Bloglines Beta.

Here is a picture of the classic starter page:

Here is a picture of the ads on a Bloglines search result:

Hat tip to ReadWriteWeb and Matt Cutts’ FriendFeed post.

Bloglines Beta Save Feature:

When you view your feeds in Bloglines Beta, you will see a new “Save” button that will save the feed, with a comment in your saved folders. The save button can be found under the feed item as illustrated in the image below:

After you click on the save button, you are asked to add a comment and specify a folder you would like the item to be saved under:

You can view all your saved items by clicking on the “Saved” section at the bottom left of the left pane. It then pulls up your saved items, as shown here:

Bloglines Beta Photo Widget:

This feature gives you larger thumbnails of images from your Flickr feeds. Previously, only the text description was available, so viewing Flickr feeds is better and faster. This was a necessary feature, and here is what it looks like:

Bloglines Beta Blog View:

With RSS, some people rarely ever visit a site anymore — so a site may lose its branding. The “Blog View” allows RSS readers to see the RSS item within the full blog site, as opposed to just the text of the item. To activate it, you must be in the 3-pane view.

Notice the “RSS” and “Preview” tabs? The image above is the RSS view. Clicking on the “Preview” tab will show you the “Blog View” version:

Bloglines compiles the top 1000 list by looking at the number of "active" subscribers for a particular feed. Bloglines told us that they know people may try to game the system, so they have decided not to detail exactly how the list is computed and ranked. You can also see that Bloglines has added a graph showing subscriber trends, a top movers chart and "New to Bloglines Top 1000."

Here is a screen capture showing the trends for specific blogs:

The number seems to indicate the position a particular blog or feed previously held in the Bloglines 1000, which appears to be updated on a weekly basis. We say this because when talking about the Top Movers (below), Bloglines said that Sew, Mama, Sew came into the Bloglines 1000 this week for the first time, moving up 790 rank spaces. Here’s the chart, and you can see the 790 figure indicating the rank rise:

We assume the chart shows rank changes over time, but how long it’s plotted isn’t clear. We’re checking on that.

The Top Movers chart can be found on the right-hand side of the Top 1000 page. Below it is a "New to Bloglines Top 1000" list:

Bloglines rival Google Reader recently added subscriber counts for feeds handled by its service, but Google Reader said they have no plans to do an official top list of their own (several unofficial lists have been compiled). For more about the Google Reader stats, see this past coverage from us:

• Google Reader Now Reporting Subscriber Figures
• Are Google Reader Stats Correct? Can We Trust Feed Stats in General?
• Google Reader Says It Does "Dailyish" Update Of Subscriber Counts

Don’t forget, aside from the new Top 1000 list, Bloglines is also still running a new Bloglines Beta, which is covered more in our Bloglines Beta To Challenge Google Reader post.

Finally, we’re thrilled to make the top 1,000 list. We’re currently ranked 310 — want to help us move higher? Then subscribe to our feed in Bloglines using this button:

And/or, subscribe to our feed using any of the services listed below this post or on our search news feeds page.

Postscript: News from Bloglines now up here. Bloglines also tells us in response to questions:

• The numbers reflect the number of ranks gained from the previous week. For example, if I’m number 10 and had a ranking of 60. My ranks gained would be 50.

The new beta has several new features including a customizable start page with drag and drop AJAX functionality, three feed viewing options including a “Quick View,” “3-Pane View,” and a “Full View.” New enhanced AJAX drag-and-drop makes feed management easy, plus a new “Unread System” that makes marking feed items clearer, quicker and easier.

I have been beta testing the beta for a while now. I am personally strongly considering switching back to Bloglines from Google Reader. I was going to do a huge review, but due to SES, I just didn’t have time.

No need to worry, Read/Write Web has a comprehensive review of the new beta Bloglines, plus there is a lot of coverage at Techmeme. You can also read Gary Price’s write up at ResourceShelf.