

Please Don't Kill Feedburner - bjonathan
http://pleasedontkillfeedburner.com/

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sabret00the
I remember reading something regarding feeds and Google.  Basically in terms of
numbers, they just don't feel that anyone users it.  Hence why it's unavailable
on Chrome.  It's a shame.  Feeds can be really useful.  Though I'll admit they're
a niche market. 

~~~
j_col
I'll continue to publish and consume feeds, regardless of what Google thinks. 
Lets not let them set the de-facto standards for the web. 

~~~
sabret00the
I'm with you 100%.  For an incredibly long time I've wanted to see Firefox
assimilate the Brief extension.  I especially hope they do so with all the
furore surrounding Twitter. 

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sync
Seems ripe for another company to come in and pick up where Feedburner left
off. 

~~~
brador
Business model? 

~~~
jeff18
How about $9.49 / month

~~~
brador
$120 a year for rss feed traffic figures?  I say go volume and increase price
post-growth.  $12/year. 

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ANTSANTS
The implications this holds for the "open web" aren't pleasant, but I'm also
scared about the idea that killing Feedburner would be the prelude to killing
off my beloved Reader. 

If Google really isn't getting anything out of maintaining feed
infrastructure, someone must see Reader as dead weight at this point. 

~~~
naner
Sadly, I think Google's problem with Reader (and Bookmarks, etc) is that they
don't require a g+ account and aren't "social" enough. 

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cowholio4
One of the feeds I to which I subscribe, preemptively moved off of Feeedburner
a couple days ago. 

[http://badassjs.com/post/32738175366/moving-off-
feedburner-p...](http://badassjs.com/post/32738175366/moving-off-feedburner-
please-update-your-rss-reader)

The primary reason the author was using it was for the subscriber count.  He
created a quick script to wrap his feed to give him counts. 

<https://gist.github.com/3816875>

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toadburglar
Whilst I did use Feedburner, I jumped ship as soon as I heard they were
shutting off the API.  The only thing that I used Feedburner was for the
subscriber count, but I've now switched the URLs around on my blog and added a
little IP based tracker that more or less gives me the count. 

I don't know if I just didn't 'get' Feedburner, but the only appeal for me was
the subscriber count, was there any other key features that your own RSS feed
cant be modified to do? 

~~~
slouch
See other comments regarding email delivery. 

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brianbreslin
Are there any competitors in this market left?  What are the key
functionalities people are looking for/going to miss from feedburner?  Would
people PAY for these tools? 

~~~
modernerd
Bloggers are typically interested in:

\- Knowing how many RSS subscribers they have. 

\- An easy way to offer email subscriptions (off by default with FeedBurner,
but available on the Publish tab). 

\- Offloading RSS traffic to another server. 

\- Having a "portable" feed address. ( If they change their domain or URL
structure, they won't lose subscribers because they can just adjust the source
feed in the feed service without affecting the public feed URL.) 

MailChimp, Aweber, and the rest have replaced FeedBurner for email
subscriptions for many because they offer more control over the HTML template,
help build lists for other marketing efforts, and are generally better set up
to guarantee delivery of email and report on opens and clickthrough rates. 

That leaves feed count, traffic distribution, and portable feed addresses
(plus whatever else you can come up with).  I think there's potential for
another service to cover these things because there are so few alternatives to
FeedBurner.  I'm not convinced that people would pay for it, though, but a free
tier might encourage a few to give it a shot. 

~~~
brianbreslin
thanks for the thorough response.  I wonder how profitable it would be if you
charged say $5/year.  guess its impossible to determine, because gizmodo or
gadgt could sign up and destroy your average cost per user. 

~~~
modernerd
Tiered pricing is probably the only sane way to go for exactly the reason you
suggest: big sites will use more resources. 

FeedBlitz, perhaps the only real 'competitor' to FeedBurner at the moment,
uses a tiered pricing model linked to the number of email subscribers you
have.  RSS subscribers are free.  So that's one option.  There will be others. 

<http://www.feedblitz.com/pricing/>

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brackin
I admittedly don't use Feedburner daily but I completely understand why
keeping Feedburner is a good move.  It's holding up the open RSS standard and a
lot of people rely on it as a service.  If Google doesn't want it, they should
either sell it.  Which admittedly they'll never do or open source it. 

~~~
icebraining
While laudable, would open sourcing it be of much use?  The really useful part
is the service, not so much the code. 

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antihero
Why exactly do people like FeedBurner so much?  What is it for that having an
RSS feed on your blog doesn't do? 

~~~
stevencorona
The only value I see (and why I use it), is so that I can track how many RSS
readers I have. 

Also interesting - RSS (for me anyways) converts really poorly.  On 100,000
pageviews, I only pick up about 100 or so RSS subscribers. 

~~~
sabret00the
RSS is only really useful as a conversation rate in communities.  Take HN for
example, it keeps you abreast of recent stories without having to open the
page.  In news sites, it's even more useful to scan the news.  The conversation
comes when users opt to partake in discussion. 

That said, some sites do it badly, my personal experience of ARS Technica for
example.  I'll often see an interesting article I want to read, but then see
something like "Read the other 52 paragraphs" and decide to come back later at
which I never do.  There's an art to creating feeds, almost like sales-people
that excel at converting window shoppers into actual shoppers due to how they
design their shop windows. 

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brador
I just checked <http://skimfeed.com> and around 30% of the feeds are coming in
through feedburner. 

A few big names: Techcrunch, GigaOM, Cnet, Make, High Scalability, Ted,
Tutsplus, Cracked, Metafilter, Discovery, Destructoid. 

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mmagin
Ha ha ha.  I remember a few years ago when everyone was in love in Feedburner,
blissfully ignoring the fact that they were choosing to give their users a RSS
(or Atom) URL which wasn't in their own domain name space which they control. 

~~~
codingthebeach
You can give users a proper RSS/ATOM URL in your domain space and still use
Feedburner -- redirect "mysite.com/feed" to your Feedburner URL.  People
started doing this years ago as a hedge against this exact situation, so that
if Feedburner went down, your users' RSS clients will still point to an
address under your control.  For a while it was even an unofficial Feedburner
recommendation.  They had a blog post about it and everything. :) 

~~~
bad_user
Remember to do a temporary redirect, not a permanent one, as many clients are
caching the destination. 

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Kilimanjaro
Yes, kill it. 

If there is a market, somebody else will rise from the ashes. 

~~~
jonny_eh
What about all the existing subscriptions that will no longer work?  That would
be a nightmare for any blogger/podcaster. 

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cowholio4
I can see why people think RSS is dead, however with services like ifttt RSS
has become so much more useful. 

Here are some of my more useful recipes involving RSS. 

* The obvious.  Getting the latest and greatest post from a small selection of high quality sites delivered to my email. ( this amounts to about 4 emails a week)

* Github commits rss feed get texted to me. 

* Github wiki page edits RSS feed are emailed to me. 

I know I'm speaking to the choir but standard structured data is vastly
useful. 

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drumdance
My understanding is that the main reason Google bought FeedBurner was a signal
to pagerank.  More subscribers = more influence. 

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andrewheins
Wow, they tried to jack everything about The Oatmeal's style, but did a poor
job of it. 

Love feedburner, but you have to wonder why they couldn't be themselves. 

~~~
mmanfrin
I don't believe this actually came from Feedburner -- this is from a blogger
who uses it. 

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anigbrowl
I don't even remember what it is that feedburner does; perhaps you should have
(re)sold me on the concept so as to get new blood involved. 

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burningout
What is the purpose of using feedburner? - > Statistics?  or the possibility
that users can subscribe by email to your updates? 

~~~
bad_user
Both. 

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awicklander
Or you could get a feedblitz account and actually use a product that will
support it's users. 

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kylelibra
I was onboard until I saw the Comic Sans font, that's where they lost me. 

~~~
toadburglar
I love the fact not only is it comic sans, but it's an entire image block, as
if Comic Sans wouldn't render properly on everyone's machine, they created an
image to make sure everyone enjoys the same Comic Sans experience.