When I first heard about FeedBurner I wondered what's so great about "burning your feed". Well, you get stats for your feed, you can customize your feed, add dynamic content at the bottom of each feed entry and transform that weird XML file into a nice HTML page that lets people subscribe to the feed.
FeedBurner transformed from a site that offered a way to make your feeds more humane, to the one-stop-shop for bloggers. They now offer stats for your blog, email subscriptions for feeds, ads for feeds and blogs. FeedBurner has dedicated services for companies, so there's no wonder that AOL, Wall Street Journal, Reuters are among their clients. But even if FeedBurner grew so much over the years, they keep adding new features, the customer support is excellent even for non-paying users.
There's a rumor that says Google intends to buy FeedBurner and this seems a very good idea. Not just because FeedBurner is the Google of feeds and has a great team. What could FeedBurner do for Google?
* make Blogger's feeds smarter out of the box
* FeedBurner's services could become totally free (currently you have to pay for more advanced stats)
* offer a lot of interesting information to mine
* integrate the stats for feeds with Measure Map and create the perfect analytics solution for blogs
* FeedBurner has a very big number of feeds: more than 700,000. Google has a lot of advertisers, but the AdSense for feeds program is still in closed beta.
Frankly, I would be very disappointed if Google were to acquire FeedBurner. I'm in the process of weening myself off of the Google apps and I'd not enjoy leaving FeedBurner as well.
ReplyDeleteBut really, putting that much consolidated information into the hands of one organization? Scary. Very, very scary.
Yes Please! I have no issues with Google, and I'll continue to use more and more of their products and applications -- at least until something bad happens. I also use FeedBurner and I'm very happy with it, but I'm sure Google could spice it up a bit.
ReplyDeleteThat would be great if that happened. The only thing that concerns me about feed burner is its performance issues. I use feed burner stats and RSS features for a few of my websites know, and I notice a distinct slow in speed when I add it to my website. Here is where I think the Google nerds will add value - use some cool algorithms to speed it up!
ReplyDeleteI think that people that would leave a service that they enjoy because it is purchased by another company, in this case Google, need to take off their tinfoil hats and relax a little. Really though, what is google going to do with your information besides provide you with a service, and for free besides. People try to make it sound like giving Google some information is like giving someone convicted of fraud all of their personal information and credit cards. I think everyone just needs to take a deep breath and relax!
ReplyDeleteI think it would be good for all involved and I agree with what you say about them making some/all? of the current paid services available for free, this is what they did for Picasa and Sketchup already!
ReplyDeleteI heard about this about 2.5 months ago. It's gonna happen.
ReplyDelete