Is FeedBurner’s End Near?
Harold Camping, a religious radio host, predicted that judgement day would be May 21, 2011 and the world would end October 21,2011.
Though Camping did admit to being wrong…
Maybe he meant October 12 not 21
Maybe he was off by a year.
And even more important than the world ending…
Maybe he meant the world as bloggers know it would end.
All around the web, the talk is, Feedburner ends October 12, 2012.
Many people keep asking if it’s true.
I’ve got to ask, does it matter?
Not the bloggers needing a feed part, but does it matter if Feedburner closes down?
I mean really, I’ve been looking into leaving for months.
Update 09/21/2012: I did leave, and here’s the post on how I did it (but if you’re unsure about leaving, read on to learn why you may want to)
Ever since May…
Maybe camping was referring to my RSS Feed.
Sometime after Mother’s Day my feed got wonky.
Subscribers via email would get emails from me on days i didn’t post with a list of my past posts, something that was not my idea and I couldn’t find a way to turn off.
I guess it pissed off many.
Because several nights ago, out of no where, overnight…I lost 100+ subscribers. They just went POOF!
And I hadn’t made one damn change to the blog nor had I written anything to piss people off – at least I don’t think I did.
I have drawn my conclusions though.
Subscribers via Google’s Feedcatcher was once a higher number. Though it doesn’t explain away the 100+, since the difference is now less, but still, there’s about 80 less now than before.
Now, Google Feedcatcher only updates feedburner in batches of who’s unsubscribed or subscribed.
Now this can really screw with your mind.
Imagine, you publish a post and promote your rss feed in it and then check your feedburner stats in a few days to see if the post helped boost your signups.
Let’s say Feedcatcher updated Feedburner during that time of your new subscribes and unsubscribes.
Not knowing that feedcatcher does this in batches, you could come to the conclusion that your post didn’t do well at all and you lost 100 subscribers which would be bloody depressing and cause you to get pissing drunk and write a post insulting your readers and lose whoever you have left.
On the flip side, you may come to the conclusion that the post did really well because you now have 100 more subscribers.
You would probably then proceed to write more posts pressuring people to signup, thinking it was a good tactic and in the end just piss off all your readers.
Maybe they become so pissed off, they subscribe just to unsubscribe to hurt your feelings.
Hey! It could happen…
Anyway…
People will unsubscribe for whatever reason.
God knows I have too many blogs in my feedreader, and if i had the time, i would delete all those i never get to read just to make the reader easier to navigate.
It’s not always a personal thing.
Sometimes it’s a practicality thing.
So, I’ve been looking at feedburner alternatives.
Feedblitz is supposedly the shit. However, you have to pay for those who subscribe by email. RSS subscribers are free. I’m not sure if you can NOT offer email subscription. I don’t mind paying a service that offers reliable support, but the pennies can add up depending on how many people decide to subscribe by email. And since I have email subscribers, I really don’t want to turn that option off.
FeedMyInbox made me sit here with my mouth hanging open, because the blogger isn’t charged, the people who subscribe get charged. What kinda BS is that?
Rapid Feeds seems ok for $4.49 /month though I can’t figure out if their feed is ads free.
Another alternative is to just use my own damn feed and purchase a plugin to track and manage it. That idea is looking better and better to me. God bless the flexibility of WordPress. Oh! And please bless my kids and hubby too. And all the good people reading this post thinking I’m crazy.
What do you use for your Feed needs?
Any recommendations?
What?? Something else to think/ worry about?? Ugh. Can I just not worry about this?
Alison recently posted..Foodie Friday: Salted Espresso Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
girllll…i dunno know, i remember when we moved your subscribers were your top priority… ya know i keep advising people to get off blogger cause who knows when it will shut down cause it’s free, i think i gotta take my own advice and pay for a feed alternative.
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Is FeedBurner’s End Near?
I hear too that Feedburner is saying ta-ta, goodbye. But a quick browse didn’t bring up any concrete news. I’d think that Google would let us know in advance, no?
I don’t have lots of subscribers. I could always create a group in my email and send an email to them whenever I post. Gosh, how kinky is that?
So what is the other free alternative, eh? Google wants everyone on Google+. So – build your tribe on Google. Oh God, it means that wherever we’ve set up our feed to auto update – is going to be *&&^%$-ed?
Grr.
Vidya Sury recently posted..A Soft Word
lol not sure why my response never posted to a few of these. i’m assuming google will let people know as they did with GFC. but again, it could all be rumors, i just hate that it’s so buggy.
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Leaving Feedburner – How I did It
Seriously? I didn’t even know about this. Oh gosh…not that I have that many subscribers anyway but that would still stink. Hmmm…will google more on Monday.
Maureen recently posted..Videos That Build A Bridge
girl the only reason i know is because i’ve been looking into leaving since May
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Here’s How To Rank In Google For Halloween
It’s something to really think about. I’ve had issues with feedburner as well. I prefer to offer wordpress email subscriptions to feedburner. It’s much quicker. Guess time for me to look into some other alternatives as well. Thanks V!
Brenda recently posted..Cooler Weather Is Under Way!
ya know if there was a service that was more pro than feedburner aka not buggy and charged a flat fee monthly, not per subscriber, i’d go with it.
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Here’s How To Rank In Google For Halloween
I was never aware with this feedburner issue but I worry about this.
What will happen to my subscribers?
Wenie, nothing’s been publicly confirmed concerning whether or not feedburner will close down, but it seems possible. however, if you’re on the Blogger platform, you may not have to worry, as was the case with GFC. but i gotta tell you, i lost 50 more subscribers last night. lol. feedburner, it’s buggy girl.
Gad, I like Feedburner. Do you think it was a glitch or subscribers cleaning out their boxes all at the same time? I do tend to purge before school starts literally and metaphorically and I should purge virtually too but I don’t.
PragmaticMom recently posted..How To: Learn 100,000 Words by 8th Grade
there was one day that i dropped 100 overnight too. plus google has been slowly pulling support for some of the third party services we were once able to use with feedburner. it reminds me of the google friend connect. for a few months before they announced it wouldn’t be available for non-Blogger sites, features started disappearing…
I use feedburner and I never really gave it much thought. It they do stop I would probably go with WP.
Ann recently posted..We Saved a Bird
Forgive me for asking this (I hope it’s not a stupid question), but what’s the difference between feedburner and MailChimp? Aren’t they the same thing? And with Feedburner and RSS, are THOSE the same thing? Or at least correlated with one another?
Kayla recently posted..Health Update Thursday(9/6)
not a stupid question girl. not at all.
let’s see.
every blog has a feed. the native feed is something like afterbedtimeblog.com/feed
that feed can be accessed by rss reader.
many decide to “burn” their feed. which means they hook up their feed with a 3rd party service, like feedburner, so they can offer subscribe by email too. there’s also the added bonus of tracking your subscribers. something that you can’t do with the native feed address. ( i subscribe to you by email and get all your posts in my inbox)
feedburner gives you a new feed address, my old one was feeds.feedburner.com/afterbedtimeblog. so wen ppl signup for you feed, via rss or email, they’re signing up for the feedburner version of the feed, not your native version.
now, to be able to offer people your feed via rss all you need is your native feed address youdomain.com/feed
to offer by email, you need a third party service. like feedburner which combines both so you manage all from one place.
otherwise you use your native with a newsletter service like mailchimp. mailchimp only offers rss feed via email, not in rss readers.
mailchimp service is free if you have less than 2k subscribers and send out less than 12k emails per month. since i use mailchimp already for my newsletter and ecourse, i find it reliable and went with them.
let me know if you have more Qs
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Mom Bloggers Who Are Learning To Kick Ass