It will be good for the web, Google, when Feedburner finally works right
Google likes to talk about how it promotes technology that benefits the entire web — open standards for social networking and the availability of white-space spectrum, for example. Which is why it’s really frustrating that one of its very own technologies — a service that numerous blogs and web sites depend on — is proving unreliable. The service, feed distributor Feedburner, keeps having problems — despite efforts to become more reliable.
This morning Feedburner went down… Continue Reading
FeedBurner is too broken for its biggest fan
Update: See this comment from Feedburner co-founder Dick Costolo for more on the progress the service is making.
Before Jason Shellen left Google and started Plinky (which launched earlier today), he helped develop products like Blogger and Reader — and he was the one who did the due diligence for Google before it bought FeedBurner for $100 million back in 2007. While I was talking to him about Plinky today, I asked him why he thinks… Continue Reading
Roundup: Virtual sex bed suit, Geni, Gay.com, Netvibes, Helio and more
Here’s the latest (ahem) action:
Second Life avatar sues another avatar, over virtual sex bed — We should have predicted this. Second Life entrepreneur Kevin Alderman has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Second Life resident Volkov Catteneo. This is apparently the first time an avatar has sued another avatar in the virtual world. Alderman, who has made money before in Second Life by selling a virtual island for $50,000 (real money), says his avatar, Stroker Serpentine… Continue Reading
Google buys Feedburner for $100M
Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million, according to Techcrunch.
Rumors about such a deal emerged a few days ago. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to the report, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.
As mentioned earlier, the Chicago-based company which launched just four years ago, raised a disciplined $10 million in capital and so a payoff like… Continue Reading
Google to buy Feedburner?
That’s what what U.K. blogger and Web 2.0 consultant Sam Sethi is saying, based on a “trusted source.”
Chicago’s Feedburner places ads at the bottom of RSS feeds, the subscription technology that early adopters use to read blogs and other news. It is slowly becoming mainstream, so while advertising on feeds is a mere trickle right now, it will likely soon become substantial.
This would give Google one more way to fill out its offerings. It… Continue Reading
The RSS dilemma
People subscribing to the RSS feeds of VentureBeat or other blogs are no more likely to click back to the original site if they are reading “partial” feeds than if they are reading “full” feeds.
This is the latest finding by Feedburner, a distributor of ads within RSS feeds (see the blog post by Rick Klau, Feedburner’s VP of Publishing Services). And it has sparked quite a debate, over at John Battelle’s blog.
The finding is significant… Continue Reading