It seems the folks over at FeedBlitz are using scare tactics to try and get people to abandon FeedBurner, and switch to their service. Since late 2005 I have questioned why bloggers, podcasters & anyone else on the net would trust a third party with one of their most valuable digital assets their RSS feed.
FeedBurner has done a couple of things to make one raise a eyebrow!
- FeedBurner.jp domain abandoned and 10’s of thousands left high and dry!
- FeedBurner Blog Shut down by Google?
- FeedBurner Twitter Feed abandoned?
Back in 2005 when Feedburner was still held by a private company, I made the following comments on this website.
“Feedburner has a nice service but the question remains why would 100,000 people trust a third party to update and maintain the lifeblood of the one single document that connects most sites to their readership. The trend is quite shocking”.
In August of 2005 Leo Laporte found out the hard way what he was giving up by having Feedburner “duplicate” his feed.
I have cautioned and warned content creators over the years that you do not need to use FeedBurner, so now have Feedblitz spreading fear that FeedBurner may be shutting down, trying to entice people to use their service.
Personally I do not think that FeedBurner is shutting down, but feel you should always have a contingency plan if they do. Let me be very clear “If you where ignorant enough to use FeedBurner in the first place, don’t be foolish and switch to a service that is crying wolf and suggesting Feedburner is going away!” Some will consider that over the top, but I am serious ask yourself why you need this service. You do realize they are largely just copying your feed don’t you?
Here are some simple facts:
- Modern browsers handle RSS feeds fine.
- Blogging platforms have been creating valid RSS feeds way before Feedburner came on the market
- Podcasters using Smartcast need to read this article on PodcastFaq.com
- Podcast Statistics are not accurate from FeedBurner
- Their is no reason to intrust your most valuable asset to any third party every.
- The only person you should trust you rss feed with is you.
Geek News Central RSS feeds have been the same since this blog launched, and the Podcast feed has been locked in since day 1. Do you realize the value in that?
https://www.geeknewscentral.com/index.xml
https://www.geeknewscentral.com/podcast.xml
I own my brand and control my own feed do you?
So we all can do this song and dance routine again years down the road with Google Groups? No thanks.
There are a lot of email services out there. Export your subscribers and take them to any third party email service. Or setup your own with Google Groups.
Question. I guess I’m one of those “ignorant people” that have used Feedburner since 2007 because I didn’t know any better. My goal really wasn’t to build a list but rather disseminate blog posts. While your article points out the flaws in doing so, it doesn’t offer any real solutions to switch to from Feedburner. If you had a site with 300 email subscribers via Feedburner, what would you switch to and how? Aweber? Thank you!
Sticking the “ignorant” label on people who use FeedBurner is not likely to win people over. It drives me crazy when tech guys put themselves on a pedestal and look down on anyone who doesn’t understand. Way to market yourself and represent the community.
Your post at FeedBlitz tries to give the impression they are shutting down. Most people using FeedBurner cannot do a Cname redirect as they did not set up their account that way. My point remains why would you even use your service to begin with when it is not needed.
FTR FeedBlitz has never said that FeedBurner is shutting down. But we have reported the facts and invited readers to see what the facts imply. It is IMHO naive to believe that FeedBurner “isn’t going away” in the light of Google’s actions especially re: FeedBurner.jp where they screwed everyone on that domain, and the shut down of the blog and the Twitter account and the API. FeedBurner has already *gone* for those people.
AS for subscriber losses, if you simply change a 30x, or CNAME redirect from one service to the other via redirects or plugin there’s no material subscriber loss – that’s how we brought @CopyBlogger’s feed and readership over. For people subscribing directly to your FeedBurner feed we have a process that ensures that anyone on the FeedBurner feed with a pulse who still wants to hear from you will also come across. Grab the Migration Guide from the site and see.
Even as early as mid 2004 there where no issues with getting enclosures into rss feeds on the majority of then popular blogging packages aka Moveable Type, Drupal etc.. It was all about the platform you picked to podcast on.
As I stated above FeedBurner is not going anywhere but there is no reason for anyone to use it anymore. Sadly so many so called podcast advisers tell their clients to use it and that is being purely reckless.
I doubt FeedBurner will shut down. The “FeedBurner Blog” was labeled “AdSense for Feeds” and it makes sense that they shut it down because they had very little content for it.
Keeping FeedBurner alive makes a lot of sense for Google, especially with Analytics.
But it’s also very strange that there was a new FeedBurner about a year ago, and it has since disappeared and was never launched.
The tough issue for anyone trying to move away from FeedBurner is their 301 redirect strategy. Unfortunately, 301 redirects won’t work for all subscribers unless the 301 redirect is permanently placed. When you shut down a feed on FeedBurner, it takes 30 days. For the first 15 days it stops updating but leaves a “feed moved” message. For the second half, it places a 301 redirect. After that, the feed is gone.
I’ve experimented with shutting down a FeedBurner feed before. After trying three times, the 301 was never permanent enough to redirect on all the subscribers.
FeedBlitz must also be ignoring this fact because they won’t acknowledge that the transfer they offer _will_ lose subscribers.
I used Feedburner with the first few podcasts I did (all now podfaded). Feedburner’s ability to turn any feed into a podcast-ready feed with enclosures was attractive. (There was no easy way to do this in the days before PowerPress or even podPress, at least, none I was ware of). But I stopped using Feedburner in 2007 and never looked back. Mainly for the reasons you’ve cited.
If Feedburner does indeed shut down, it’s going to be really inconvenient for a lot of people. But I won’t be one of them.