The FeedBurner re-design has been in beta testing for a few months now, but does it make the service better?
I’m a big fan of FeedBurner and I really like the new look and feel as it's much cleaner and matches other Google products, however since it’s so familiar, it feels a little lacking.
At this time there is no way to select a date range other than the pre-defined time periods that are offered, there is no way to export data, and there is no way to tie data points together; such as referring URLs to posts.
What I’d really like to see is FeedBurner integrate this information into Google Analytics. The two services are very similar in what they do, and how they look, that it feels like they should live together. Hopefully then FeedBurner could utilize some of the great features in Google Analytics to make this data more robust.
Other than the new design, the only other new item is the fact that it does real-time analytics. This lets you use what impact your new post has on the web moments after you publish it.
Now if you really have time to sit down and watch your analytics in real-time, good for you. But I doubt many will see this as a usable feature.
Instead, I’d like to see FeedBurner give users more customization and social interaction.
Integration into Twitter is great, but what about Facebook? Are there other destinations that could benefit from updates? What about seeing status updates that include our FeedBurner URL so we can really see how it’s being syndicated?
What about some additional feed customization? The basic ‘clean’ template is ancient in terms of internet age and it’d be nice to see even basic customization like Twitter offers.
How about the ability to share a FeedBurner account with multiple Google accounts? Much like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, sometimes more than one person wants to analyze the data.
How about some nice charts and data points like Feed Analysis offers? These charts are well received by those that don’t get the data.
It just seems to me that FeedBurner has just maintained its presence since it was acquired by Google in 2007. Little changes have been happening over the years, but it still feels like it’s not living up to its potential.
Maybe it’s the lack of competition, or maybe the FeedBurner teams feels it doesn’t need to be any more than it already is, however I’d like to see FeedBurner step up its game and become much more valuable to marketers and site owners.
Google
made a couple of announcements today that actually combined for perhaps a more
interesting announcement than either of them as stand-alone news items.
First, Google has
added a new share button to the Google Toolbar, which allows users to
share any site on the web via their social network of choice. Second, Google
announced that with Feedburner, you can now
set your feeds up to post to Twitter.
The thing that these two announcements have in common is that they both utilize
a new URL shortener from Google. They tried to slip that in their quietly a
couple of times, but then went ahead and made an announcement about the service
itself.
The shortening service is located at
goo.gl, but it is not available for broad consumer use at this point.
Google is just using it itself to compliment the aforementioned services. In
other words, you can't just go to goo.gl and shorten a URL yourself. However,
Google says that in time, it may offer such an option.
"We think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible — making it faster and easier to share, post and email links," Google says. They also say the core goals of the Google URL Shortener are:
-
Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime
- Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages
- Speed – fast resolution of short URLs
Google's
standard privacy policy applies to goo.gl. The company says that it may choose
to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about
particular shortened links, such as the number of end use clicks.
The desire
to integrate products is strong at Google; it’s not hard to imagine that the
company would eventually like to offer one great, big
search/video/email/advertising ball. And today, it took a tiny step along that
path by rolling together some analytics products.
A post on the
AdSense for Feeds blog announced, “If you use either AdSense for
feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics,
as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics
show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you
understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your
site.”
The post then continued, “Specifically, we will help you classify your links by
tagging the Source as ‘feedburner,’ the Medium as the channel in which we sent
out your feed such as ‘feed’ or ‘email,’ and the Content as the actual endpoint
application in which the user viewed your feed content such as ‘Google Reader’
or ‘Yahoo! Mail.’”
More
distribution endpoint labels are on the way, too.
Hopefully this update will help people earn a little extra money heading into
the holidays. At the least, it may simplify FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds
users’ lives a little, which would also represent a nice treat this time of
year.
It looks like Twitter's filled another hole in its lineup of key executives. The title of Chief Operating Officer should go to Dick Costolo, who was the cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner and also did a stint at Google post-acquisition.
Costolo left Google about two months ago. His LinkedIn profile claims that, since then, he's been working for Monkey Beach Crime, Inc. (Chalk this odd tale up to Costolo's former career as a comedian).
Michael Arrington provided a more likely story by writing this afternoon, "Dick Costolo is Twitter's new chief operating officer, we've heard from multiple sources. . . . We'd heard he was looking to start a new company, but obviously Twitter swooped in and grabbed him."
Since he's worked for both a startup and a corporate giant with a $144 billion market cap, Costolo may be in a good position to help Twitter mature as a business. Experience on both ends of that scale is hard to come by and often quite valuable.
If - and this is an if that at least a few people are thinking about - Google tries to buy Twitter, Costolo could probably help there, too.
It’s been slowly coming for a very long time. Google announced that they’d acquired FeedBurner back in May 2007. Only eleven months later (*eye roll*), in April 2008, the two finally began their integration. And now it’s complete.
Last night, FeedBurner was the same website. Today, feedburner.com redirects (with masking) to google.com and www.feedburner.com gives the Google login:
Once you sign in, however, you find the old FeedBurner layout. If you’re a FeedBurner user, you’ve probably seen the promptings to migrate your feeds to Google. As the above screenshot assures you, there’s still time. In fact, the front-page–only change may just be a ploy to reluctant or lazy users to migrate faster.
Have you seen this change?
The
Adsense-meets-Feedburner era has officially begun. As mentioned
here, the slow "Googlization" of Feedburner has gotten underway, and
on Friday, the public got to see some Adsense ads in Feedburner feeds.
A couple months ago some publishers began displaying them, but now they are in
full swing.
The beginning of Feedburner's Adsense era came just shortly after they closed
down the FeedBurner Ad Network, a movie that Meghan Keane at Wired.com
billed as "The beginning of the End for Feedbuner?"
A little harsh perhaps. With the popularity of Adsense added to the existing
popularity of Feedburner, the move doesn't exactly sound the alarm of death in
my ears.
Many are bound to be irritated by the move, but you're never going to make
everybody happy.
I think Adsesne and Feedburner will get along with each other just fine.
According to
previous comments on the Feedburner Weblog, publishers will be able
to manage their feed ad units straight from the AdSense Setup tab, and track
performance from the AdSense Report tab.
Sounds convenient to me.
About a
month ago, it was
hinted at that Feedburner would start incorporating AdSense into
feeds as a product of its
acquisition by Google.
It appears that time is approaching with feeds for some publishers getting ready
to start displaying AdSense ads this week.
Steve over at the official Feedburner Weblog
tells publishers what to expect:
So what will this mean for you? Well, publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content, with the added revenue that full back-fill coverage provides. And with AdSense, you'll know that your back-filled ads are using the strongest contextual ad engine, ensuring the most relevant and profitable ads are delivered to your subscribers. And yes, ads are also sold via Google's AdWords program.
This seems
to just be the next logical step in the "Googlization" of Feedburner. Publishers
will be able to manage their feed ad units straight from the AdSense Setup tab,
and track performance from the AdSense Report tab.
"You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content
units, or keep them totally separate," says Steve.
Feedburner promises more details with their full AdSense launch coming in the
near future. .
Almost 11 months ago, Google announced its acquisition of FeedBurner. Now, FeedBurner finally seems ready to make some aesthetic changes and more serious overhauls.
Steve Olechowski, the cofounder and COO of FeedBurner, wrote of things that will affect "selected publishers" in a note on the official FeedBurner blog. One difference is that the first people to be affected by the rollout will be able to sign in with their Google account info. Okay, so you're not wildly applauding yet.
Another adjustment is getting some genuinely strong reactions on the opposite end of the spectrum, though, and that's the planned integration of AdSense. Allen Stern observed, "The FeedBurner ad network was one of my absolute favorites over the past year - the CPMs were very high and the ad quality was exceptional.
He then continued, "Looks like the program will probably go bye-bye, replaced with the lovely tiny text ads that only pay on a click or worse, an acquisition. Over time what this will mean is that RSS feeds might become cluttered just like Web sites and the quality of ads will be lowered."
The way in which Google and FeedBurner handle this will have a huge impact on users' (and advertisers') responses, of course; opt-out buttons or especially well-targeted ads could smooth everything over. Unrelated changes are supposedly in the works, too, so users will have some incentive to stick around and see the final product.
Integrating Bidvertiser with FeedBurner, Blogger, WordPress
BidVertiser has recently added the ability to integrate its services with FeedBurner, Blogger and WordPress:
WordPress Plugin to allow you to seamlessly embed the BidVertiser Ads in your feeds.
Solution for FeedBurner that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in your current FeedBurner address.
Solution for Blogger that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in the footer of each of your post feeds.
The
integration is actually quite simple and literally takes less than a minute to
setup. Below are the instruction for Blogger and Feed Burner:
Blogger (full
instructions)
Login to your Blogger account.
Click Settings -> Site Feed.
Copy your BidVertiser Feed Code to the Post Feed Footer area.
You must also set Enable Post Pages to Yes (in Archiving settings) and set Allow Blog eeds to Full.
Click Save Settings.
FeedBurner (full instructions)
Register your ORIGINAL feed with BidVertiser (not the one you got from FeedBurner).
Login to your FeedBurner account.
Click Edit Feed Details.
Type your new feed address from BidVertiser under Original Feed.
Click Save Feed Details.
There are
a lot of data points that can be meaningful for tracking blog effectiveness.
That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog
content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog
that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding
crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s
meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.
Many of the metrics tools used for blogs are also used for basic web site analytics. That makes sense because many blog initiatives do not have the same kind of budget as web site marketing programs do. Therefore, the analytics employed tend to be low(er) or no cost.
Regardless of the purpose, I’ve assembled a list below of the various tools we use, or have tested to report onsite blog metrics. Pick the service or tool you like the most from the list below or something new for your unique purpose and please share in the comments. The list is in no particular order.
103bees - Free web stats (ad supported) up to 100k visits per month, then it’s $9
Enquisite - Free, extremely detailed web stats
Hittail - Provides suggested topics for your blog by keywords used in referral traffic
Crazy Egg - Provides overlay, list and heat map web stats
RobotReplay - Lets you record visitor actions on your site and play them back
Clicky - Web stats plus feed and Feedburner stats
Google Analytics - Web stats, not really the best for blogs but it’s free
StatCounter - Free web stats
Co.mments - Track comment threads starting on your blog and follow them elsewhere in a feed
Blog Tracker - Free from IceRocket but limited functionality
Performancing Metrics - Basic is Free, or $3.99 to $16.99 per month for more features
Site Meter - Basic Free and Premium versions $6.95 and up
Mint - Popular web stats with bloggers for $30 per site
MyBlogLog - Basic blog visitor stats and social networking. Free and paid versions.
Feedburner Stats - StandardStats Free, TotalStats $4.99/mo
Wordpress Stats - Free basic blog stats plugin for Wordpress blogs
Google Analytics and Feedburner Stats - Free plugin for Wordpress blogs
eXTReMe Tracking - Free web stats with a paid version for $4.50 per month
Web Stat - Many web stats features for $5/mo
TraceWatch - Free but you need access to your server which should be running PHP/MySQL
What are
your favorite analytics tools for blogs?
A lot of
predictions were made about 2007, just like every other year. Some came true,
some didn't. Here's a list of what didn't happen.
Vertical search and niche social networks didn't take off
Well, there were many copycats, but not a lot of breakthrough players. Vertical search? Only if Google's integration of Universal Search counts. Niche networks? Though I predicted the beginning of this era, very little has happened. People are still flocking to the broad-appeal social networks, but that still could change.
RSS didn't go mainstream
A significant portion of the tech elite predicted this would be the year RSS went mainstream. And, well, it really didn't, despite Vista, which people are ditching in favor of a return to their beloved Windows XP. Ask anybody not closely following developments on the Web if they know what an RSS feed is. Bet you'll be surprised at how few have heard of one. But that too, may change in the coming year. You know, again.
Yahoo didn't buy Feedburner (or Facebook)
Several industry observers noted that somebody, probably Google, would buy Feedburner. And that's exactly what happened, perhaps another sign that RSS is on the brink once again.
Online video didn't prove to be a moneymaker
Blinkx and Brightcove, MetaCafe and DailyMotion all made headway in 2007, but all anybody talks about in regard to online video is YouTube, which possibly may have nailed down the right balance of user-generated content and monetization. But definitive success remains to be seen. Bandwidth costs are a bit of a concern, too. Who knows? Maybe Hulu will strike it rich?
GOOG didn't split or slow down
Google didn't split, but is also didn't reach $1,000 per share as some predicted. But there's always next year, and hovering around $700 is not too shabby.
Candidates still didn't answer questions
At the end of 2006 the term "YouTube Presidency" was already being tossed around. And sure enough, 2007 saw the first YouTube debates for both Democrat and Republican frontrunners. That means that YouTube not only became vital for the expansion of user-generated content, but also as an agent for social change. But candidates still dodged tough questions like they were playing full-contact lawn darts.
SecondLife didn't get a second wind
SecondLife seemed unstoppable in 2006, and for part of 2007, spawning its own currency and legal philosophies. Companies began experimenting with building their own SecondLife areas, and thieves and vandals ran amok, too. At the end of 2007, who's still talking about it? Hardly anybody, and the virtual tumbleweeds seem to be increasing as members seem to spending less and less time there -- their initial infatuation wearing thin. Jury's still out though. The site has seen some positive growth, just the not the explosive growth everyone was counting on.
Widgets didn't falter
Widgets certainly did explode onto the scene in 2007. After Facebook opened up its platform to developers, the applications began pouring in. And then Facebook users started virtual food fights. Sophisticated usage or not, you have to chalk one up for the success of widgets in social networking.
Google didn't bust the office block
When people are uninstalling Vista and replacing it with Windows XP, you might expect any competing office product to gain ground against Microsoft Office, too. Everybody oohed and ahed over Google's new presentation offering, but then went right on using PowerPoint. Because that's what you use for presentations, everybody knows it. Google gets an 'A' for effort and for presenting alternatives, but as Microsoft is learning with Vista, the public seems rather reluctant to change the status quo.
Unless it's for Apple products, that is.
AdCenter and Panama didn't catch AdSense
Nobody, contrary to predictions that MSN AdCenter and Yahoo's Panama would gain ground against AdWords and AdSense, really put up a much of a fight against Google. Google continues to gain search share and search advertising dollars while its two biggest competitors still struggle to keep up.
People didn't switch to Windows Live
Windows Live, Windows What? That's different from MSN how? No one really knows or cares that much outside of Redmond, unless they actually kept Vista and didn't switch the default search to Google.
Google didn't release an operating system (again)
No, there's still no traditional operating system from Google to compete with Microsoft and Apple. But there is Android, which Google is developing for mobile phones, so there may finally be some vindication for those who've been waiting now for years.
People didn't abandon their TV sets
Internet TV? Well, not quite yet, though TV made prodigious use of Internet content. Baby-steps have been made toward the transition with releases like AppleTV, network websites and mini-shows for the web. Verizon and AT&T are both banking on television over fiber connections. The vast majority still get their TV from broadcast, cable, or satellite, but the winds of change are a-blowin'.
VoIP didn't take over everything.
In fact, eBay wrote off Skype as overvalued and Vonage was sued by everybody within arm's reach. 2007 wasn't so great for VoIP, but who knows about 2008? Maybe, maybe.
The pageview didn't die
The pageview, as a metric, hasn't died. It may not be as strong as it once was with new measures like user engagement or new formats like AJAX becoming more popular, but the pageview is still used for many business models, especially those selling advertising. Eyeballs are still eyeballs.
Newspapers didn't die, either
But they might be sick. There's still a generational split when it comes to where people prefer to get their news, but even that appears to be dwindling. The younger crowd no doubt prefers digital formats while the older crowd, which still clings to email too, likes the morning paper and a cup of coffee.
Google didn't settle with Viacom
When Google acquired YouTube late in 2006, their was a resounding chorus that Google just bought itself a world of copyright problems. Sure enough, Viacom slapped them with a billion-dollar lawsuit which still hasn't been settled despite Google's effort to be more vigilant about fighting copyright infringement. YouTube's still the best place to find anything you might have missed on MTV.
The Web 2.0 bubble didn't burst.
Yahoo CEO Terry Semel didn't cut it
And neither did Yahoo, for that matter. Semel is out, and Yahoo is, well, still a distant second.
AOL didn't have another privacy gaffe
But Facebook did. John Battelle nailed it when he predicted another privacy fiasco on the AOL search query level. Facebook Beacon is the big winner at being the big loser.
The iPhone didn't bring the mobile web to everybody
Despite the drooling, ecstatic reception of the iPhone, mobile Internet still has a ways to go in the US. The technology is the starting point, just like with the iPod, but to continue, access to the mobile web needs to become cheaper. As soon as Verizon and AT&T stop liking money so much, (or when Google busts the block) expect the mobile web to really explode.
A major newspaper didn't fold up its print division in favor of online publishing.
But magazine InfoWorld did, and the San Francisco Chronicle cited a growing online news market as the chief catalyst for laying off a large portion of its news staff.
HD-DVD didn't win
In the HD-DVD/Blu-ray format war, nobody's won yet. And there may not be a winner, either.
The NYT and the WSJ didn't stay snooty
The New York Times decided content wants to be free and opened up its Times Select articles to the online world. And then, the Wall Street Journal opened up, too. A trend? Seems that way.
Digital rights management didn't get anywhere
DRM didn't get much love, even from record companies. Three major record labels announced they were getting rid of DRM.
The Democrats didn't do much of anything
The Democrats didn't really do anything about Net Neutrality or other web-related policies. They talked about it, made threats, wrote letters, but never managed to get legislation out the door. Maybe next year, if not too distracted by the elections again.
The Web did not come to a grinding halt
The Internet didn't crash because of video. They predicted it for 2007, and are still predicting it for 2008 and beyond, but gridlock didn't happen, and as more and more bandwidth is added and fiber expands, it's probably not going to happen.
Amazon's stock didn't crash
It more
than doubled instead. Though
an analyst noted that "AMZN is a stock that continues to live on
borrowed time," when it was at $38.50, two months later, it's selling at $95.
In the spirit of the season - we’ve compiled a few things we are thankful for around here at Ignite.
As always,
feel free to add to the list 
Enjoy!
The “human genome project” Pandora. Without it, Lisa’s musical taste would suffer more than it already does.
We are all thankful for Gene’s glorious dreds, being able to capture this picture, and his fluency in coding languages.
Jim is thankful for people over 40 who join Facebook, people who don’t giggle when he says Twitter, and his small but growing number of Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers and followees, Plaxo connections, Digg fans, and most of all, people who link back to us. (On a side note - Lisa is amazed at how unabashedly Jim has started shilling for new online friends with link lists like this and will be thankful when he gets stalkers.)
Common Craft, who consistently break things down in creative, comprehensible ways and for creating helpful videos like this.
Feedburner and Google Analytics. These have provided us with hours of free entertainment.
Clients who “get” it, or come to us in order to “get it”.
Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger for writing Cluetrain Manifesto.
A good Technorati “Authority” rating, that puts the Ignite blog ahead of 99.825039% of all blogs in the world. (Not that we’re counting or anything….)
Blogs like ExperienceCurve, Glen Allsopp over at at ViperChill, and Enterprise 2.0’s FastForwardBlog.
Blendtec. For being brave enough to blend an iphone, a rake, and a can of Easy Cheese - and for proving the power of social media marketing.
On a final
note, we’d like to thank all of you for reading, commenting, linking, and doing
what you do. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Webmasters Google Go-to-guy Matt Cutts has a post in his blog which asks all suggestions on improving Webmaster Central. After all improvements were made based on suggestions given by webmasters.
Improvements include:
Site owners can now see their own backlinks.
Verify an IP address is really Googlebot done but by using a reverse+forward DNS lookup.
An option to easily remove URLs from the index. Google’s URL removal tool has been ported into the webmaster console, and it allows site owners to see and revoke their self-removals.
Show how many people are subscribed to my website’s feeds in Google Reader: DONE, but not in the console. Google Reader now reports these numbers when fetching feeds. Feedburner will give you even more stats for free.
Communicate with webmasters in an authenticated way: DONE. Just last week, Google added a webmaster message center provide authenticated communication with site owners. The Webmaster Central team has done of ton of other stuff in the last few months as well.
Upcoming features will be based on the list below:
More information about penalties or other scoring issues
Tools for detecting or reporting duplicate content
Show links on your site that are broken
Score the crawlability or accessibility of pages
Tool to help move from one domain to a new domain
Tell Google the correct country or language for a site
Show PageRank numbers instead of none/low/medium/high
Diagnostic wizard for common site problems
Some type of rank checking
Show causes of 404 errors
A way to list supplemental result pages
Option to "disavow" backlinks from or to a site
Fetch a page as Googlebot to verify correct behavior
Tell Google a parameter doesn't matter
More documentation and examples
Ability to show/download all pages from a site (e.g. if your server crashed)
Integrate "Add URL" feature.
Feedburner,
recently acquired by Google, has taken a step for their users using
another of Google’s products, Blogger.
I know what many are thinking…
Blogger and Wordpress.org blogs are for fair-weather or social bloggers… but I
think that anyone that contributes (not
copies) content to the Internet are valuable.
From Burning Questions:
…we are very excited to announce the immediate availability of one-click redirection for Blogger Blogspot blogs (note our fine use of both alliteration and first syllable congruence).
If you host your content on a Blogger blog with a blogspot.com address (or use Blogger’s “custom domain” feature), you can now redirect your native Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed (quite easily, might we add). Gone are the muggy, languorous days of wrestling with “autodiscovery” tags in foreboding corners of your Blogger template code or hacking through this tangled discussion thread for a glimpse of configuration clarity.
OK, so Google is looking out for their users, right? Well, I think that any and everyone should be able to track their users, and those on a blogger domain that want to track their readers are using it for more than mere “social purposes.”
I will be
honest, I started on
blogger, something that I wish I could have changed, but I think that
it does have a valuable place on the Internet.
Ionut Alex Chitu at Google Operating System welcomed the change in terms. He noted the service used to cost $3-$14 per month, based on the number of feeds coming from an account.
"With MyBrand, publishers can continue to take advantage of all of FeedBurner’s services, but provide a transparent experience by running everything through their domain (e.g. feeds.yoursitenamehere.com) instead of ours," FeedBurner said in its service FAQ.
Site publishers who value their brands, and that should include anyone with a modicum of marketing savvy, will want to activate MyBrand for their accounts. FeedBurner has earned a place as a valuable service for websites that publish feeds, and MyBrand makes those feeds more valuable now.
This is
not an attempt to bash Google. However, you can sometimes learn
what not to do from some very
successful people and products.
Google has been extremely active in the last year adding services and developing
products for users and webmasters alike, however, in some instances they have
missed the mark.
Here are some of the news, new and improved products from Google:
Dell to Build Google Search Appliances
Clean Energy and Green Technology at Google
Google Launches Plug-In Hybrid Car Initiative and Unveils Solar Installation
Google Allows Webmasters to Report Spam in Index
Google Launches Universal Search
Google Gears Brings Online Content to Offline Applications
Hot Trends Added to Google Trends
Google Working with LG on the new “Google Phone”
Google Gives Webmasters a Better View of Links
Google has done so much, and they are setting a pace for themselves, online and in the financial arenas, that will be difficult to maintain, hence the partnerships and acquisitions.
OK, back to
the point!
If you can’t build it, buy it… No, this is not the lesson. The real lesson is:
When you have an idea, keep working to improve it!
What I am
not saying: Google fails to improve on
products and services.
What I am saying: Google can loose
focus too!
I’m not saying that they have, however, some services don’t appear to be a priority for Google. Specific point, Google Reader. Back in December 2006, Matt Cutts posted about “What we want from Google for Christmas.” So, I thought about the products and services that I use that are provided by Google: GMail, Reader, Webmaster Central, Analytics, AdWords, AdSense, the list goes on. What I wanted to find was something that I could give Google feedback for improvement. One little function that could or should be included in a product that I use. I provided my response, search functionality in Google Reader.
Seems so novel, search capabilities from a search engine, but Reader still lacks this feature. I don’t know the difficulty in providing this for users, but it seems like a simple feature for the number 1 search portal.
The moral:
1. Don’t forget about your users when developing your website/service/widget.
2. Ideas are great, but don’t pick up a new one until you have done your best on
each one before.
3. Always be open to feedback. Sometimes your users will give you that little
something that will propel you to the top!
Regular
WebProNews readers have probably already guessed this, but for what it’s worth,
a new report has confirmed all our suspicions: Google takes over more companies
than just about anybody else out there.
“For years,” writes Scott Austin for
Dow Jones, “Cisco Systems Inc. has been the most prolific acquirer of
venture-backed start-ups, pocketing 22 such companies since 2004, according to
industry tracker VentureOne. But Google has emerged at the top of the list so
far this year, acquiring five venture-backed start-ups to Cisco’s four.”
Granted, five isn’t as impressive a number as 22 (though the numbers are from
admittedly different periods of time), but Austin adds, “[Google’s] showing no
sign of stopping, as the search outfit looks for companies that fit its
overarching mission: ‘To organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.’”
And as some recent purchases demonstrate - think
PeakStream,
Panoramio,
GreenBorder, and
FeedBurner, just in the last month or so - there are a lot of
corporations that apparently fit into that mission. Austin isn’t kidding when
he describes Google as “the cash-oozing search giant.”
Is this a good thing? Well, definitely, if you happen to have a company that
you’re looking to sell off. As for Google (and its competitors), it’s a little
harder to say if this spending spree is the best use of money. There’s no
doubting that the search engine company’s plans have worked so far, however.
Feedburner is informing users they have until June 15, eight days
from now, to opt-out of giving Google data on their accounts.
Users have until the 15th before Google’s privacy policy become’s Feedburner’s,
and Google gets access to RSS feed usage data, ad data, and anything else owned
by Feedburner. Those who do not want Google having access to that data, can
choose to opt out before then, which will result in their account being deleted
and all statistical data and history being purged.
Really, there isn’t a whole lot to worry about. There aren’t going to be a bunch of Google engineers sitting around going, “Ooh, look, Steve Rubel has that number of feed subscribers using Bloglines. Tee hee”. But it’s really cool of Feedburner to give paranoid users the option of getting out if they really wanted to. It’s the sort of thing that should be adopted in principle, if not in law, for future acquisitions. Imagine if a service you used was acquired by a company know for selling user data to spammers. Wouldn’t you want a week to get the hell out?
By
adding FeedFalre to your FeedBurner feed, you are making it easier for users to
interact with your posts. Visitors don’t always make it to your site to read
comments or hit one of the social bookmark buttons. Brining the options to the
readers will increase the chances of them sharing one of your posts and getting
you additional exposure.
Google has announced it has acquired Chicago-based FeedBurner, a deal that had been rumored to be taking place since last week. Terms of the purchase have not been disclosed.
On the Google Blog, Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management writes," For those of you who aren't bloggers, podcasters, or feed creators, Chicago-based FeedBurner is a leading provider of feed distribution and management tools."
"A web feed is a way for online publishers to syndicate their content and deliver it straight to readers. Each day, FeedBurner delivers feeds to millions of users around the world and offers unique and useful tools for publishers to analyze, optimize, and monetize their content."
"Further, FeedBurner offers a feed advertising platform for advertisers to reach engaged feed readers through targeted in-feed ads and innovative techniques like RSS feed-driven ads."
FeedBurner CEO Dan Costolo had this to say about the deal in a blog post, "We like our chances. We are confident that we are going to be a part of the company that can best deliver the most comprehensive suite of services to publishers".
" We are confident that we're going to continue to have fun and innovate for customers as rapidly as possible. We are confident and hopeful that you'll look at your feed dashboard soon and say to yourself "Well, *that* was a good idea!"
