Why Syntagma does not use Feedburner
Lots of conversation around the place about Dave Winer’s post (now two) on “why Feedburner’s in trouble” — Feedburner is a service that manages your feeds in various innovative ways, but not before it swallows your URL into its own.
At first glance it seems that everybody is now using FB. We at Syntagma are not, although I did adopt it for six months a couple of years ago. What put me off was the thought that if China, say, barred the Feedburner domain, as they’re apt to do, you would be blocked too, along with millions (?) of other sites. The words “eggs” and “basket” spring unbidden to the mind.
The stats provision was great, mind you, and they also handle advertising in the feeds. It’s become a pretty comprehensive service, which I believe is still free for most users.
So, why don’t we just bite the bullet and sign up with FB? First, a little philosophy.
As far as software goes, I’m not one of those chaps who’s constantly on the lookout for small incremental improvements in performance from shiny new apps. I use Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer because almost everything else in the business environment is compatible. They are about as universal as it gets offline and on and allow me to relax about most things while getting on with the toil of earning a living.
So why not Feedburner?
One, it’s so ruddy intricate and adds yet another raft of complexity and layers of choice to an already over-engineered online world. I recoil from its sheer brilliance. If it paid me $10,000 a month, I probably would consider it — it would be worth the hassle. But I know it won’t, so I don’t.
Dave’s point that new owner, Google (no less), may tie the product to its Google Reader and other apps, is another point of contention. Lazily, I’m still on Bloglines, although I do have Reader set up — it’s rarely used for the same reason I don’t use Newsgator any more. Bloglines fulfils my simple needs and, by and large, performs well. Why chop and change for the sake of it?
So now someone at Google “owns” Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone.
We should always remember that the people who come to the internet to spend money and swot up on a topic are not geeks and students at Stanford. They are ordinary folk who don’t want all that complexity, but a simple user interface that intuitively guides them seamlessly to what they want.
That’s what “the next billion users” need. Let’s not forget them.
If you used the MyBrand service, the feed would be in your own domain. They’ve offered it for years, and in fact, recently made it free. So when China does the banning, take your feed and go wherever you want. Ain’t tied to FeedBurner.
Can’t help you on the “oh, what if Google goes all evil and ties it to Reader thing.” But that not really an issue, either. Dave’s concerned FeedBurner might be used to force Atom feeds down everyone’s throat, with FeedBurner swapped to only put those out and Google Reader to only accept them. Of course, he’s complained Google would do this for years, and yet they still seem to accept RSS. But say they go crazy and do exactly as what Dave says. Fine — you can still take your feed and go. Using FeedBurner has exactly no impact on that decision, since it would be a Google Reader decision. All you will have done is denied yourself nice stats and a very handy service that actually makes feed management easier.
By Danny Sullivan on July 24th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Thanks for the info, Danny. This is a many-stranded issue and not easily resolved. My instinct tells me to avoid it — unless it becomes so universal our public face becomes positively antidiluvian.
I don’t think that’s going to happen.
By John Evans on July 24th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
An alternative that I like is a plugin called FeedStats that works well and if you want to offer subscribers emails there is a plugin for that too. So all these things can be customized.
I don’t see any long term benefit in using Feedburner.
By David Krug on July 24th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
I never follow the crowd. If everybody’s going one way, you’ll see me walking in the other direction — right into the tidal wave. Must be my journalistic training.
I’ll look into FeedStats. Thanks.
By John Evans on July 25th, 2007 at 10:31 am
I’ve got over 50 feeds at Feedburner .. I finally got around to putting my caricature on all feeds, And, even though the stats are now free, I still haven’t gone back and put the code in all my templates.
I got a headache trying to figure out the MyBranding option and if I were to go ahead - I still have a lot of feeds! Do I brand the network? or the domain?
I don’t know what effect it will have on me to change the RSS Feeds from feedburner to no-feedburner … but, I’ve thought about that.
Oh - and I prefer Bloglines too .. over google reader any day.
By HART (1-800-HART) on July 25th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
It’s the network that needs the strong brand, HART. The domains work in their own way. If one takes off trafficwise, it creates its own sub-branding.
These services can sometimes be more trouble than they’re worth. If you add up all your time learning them, customizing and manipulating them, then figured out how much that was worth compared to what extra it earns for you, I doubt there’s any advantage in any of them.
By John Evans on July 25th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
That’s my initial thought too.
What I think I will do however, is continue with the feedburner and keep the Feedburner/FeedSmith plugin activated. That’s supposed to tie everything in and count the feed subscribers properly from the ..URL/feed to URL/?feed=rss2 to the feedburner.feed/code etc etc. Then, I’ll just switch the URL/feed as the main button on the next version of my template so new subscribers get that instead. Hopefully that will solve everything, and not phase out feedburner, but become less reliant.
By HART (1-800-HART) on July 25th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I wish you well, HART, I hope it all works out.
By John Evans on July 25th, 2007 at 5:47 pm