Are You a FeedBurner Fool?
There are few things more important to a blog than it's RSS feed. However, there are way too many good blogs out there who are playing the equivalent of blogging Russian Rullet with their blog's feed for no good reason.
In case you have been living under a blogging rock, FeedBurner is a company (recently acquired by Google) who provides the following services free over charge to bloggers:
- Publicize your content and make it easy for people to subscribe.
- Optimize distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.
- Analyze your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they're coming from and what they like best.
- Make Moneyitize by participating in the FeedBurner Ad Network. Why not reward yourself for your effort?
While not listed above, another service provided by FeedBurner is the hosting of your feed. Since RSS probably accounts for 70% or more of the average blog's traffic, this is a very valuable proposition. However, it comes with a very substantial risk; you are completely giving up control of subscribers to FeedBurner. If anything bad where to ever happen to FeedBurner, you could potentially lose all of your blog's subscribers. Or put another way, imagine a blog like TechCrunch having nearly 800K subscribers today and zero tomorrow. I wonder what that would do to revenues and valuations?
FeedBurner does a redirect feature, but it doesn't provide very much functionality. In addition, this feature is only usable if FeedBurner is still around. I know Google acquired them and this does decrease some of the risk (and scares the hell out of others), but there are no guarantees.
What makes this whole thing even crazier is there is a very easy way to continue using FeedBurner and additionally protect protect your feed: MyBrand. MyBrand is a FeedBurner service which among other things allows you to specify your own url for FeedBurner to use via a DNS CNAME record.
...a record in a DNS database that indicates the true, or canonical, host name of a computer that its aliases are associated with. A computer hosting a Web site must have an IP address in order to be connected to the World Wide Web. The DNS resolves the computer’s domain name to its IP address, but sometimes more than one domain name resolves to the same IP address, and this is where the CNAME is useful.
MyBrand used to be a commercial service and even though it used to only cost a couple dollars a month to use, I think this is why most blogs are not using. With the Google acquisition it is now completely free and very easy to setup. FeedBurner tracks statistics based on your feed name and not the Url, so there is absolutely nothing to lose. Once setup, if for any reason you need to take back control of your feed, you can change it from a CName to a regular DNS entry.
Finally, while the MyBrand link above points out you will need to setup a CNAME record, this is a very easy thing to do if you manage your own DNS and I have yet to come across a reputable ISP who would not set one up for you if you do not manage your own DNS.
If you currently use FeedBurner, you owe it to yourself to make this change ASAP. Everyday you wait you run the risk of losing more subscribers.
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Comments
Jake Good on on 6.12.2008 at 9:23 AM
If Feedburner did a permanent redirect (301) most feed readers SHOULD pick that up... but I like MyBrand... pretty nice!
Scott Watermasysk on on 6.12.2008 at 9:29 AM
They do a 301 redirect if request it, but it only lasts for 30 days and that also assumes the feature and service continue to always exist.
Rodrigo Sieiro on on 6.12.2008 at 9:32 AM
Hey Scott.
I use FeedBurner in my blog, but through a WordPress plugin that automatically redirects my original feed address to FeedBurner. So all the readers are really subscribing to the feed address in my site, and being redirected to FB. If something ever happens to DB or I decide not to use it anymore, solving the problem is as easy as disabling the plugin.
The plugin is called FeedBurner FeedSmith and is available in FB's site.
I believe its "magic" happens through URL redirection depending on the user agent, so FB itself won't be redirected when downloading your feed.
Jake Good on on 6.12.2008 at 9:34 AM
Another thing I saw... MyBrand is for a Pro FeedBurner account only (at least when I just logged into my FeedBurner)... unless I'm missing something...
Steve Smith on on 6.12.2008 at 9:37 AM
Rodrigo,
I didn't find an RSS link on your site but it wouldn't surprise me if the one being exposed by the plugin is really the FB URL (while cloaking the real one so that FB can get to the actual feed). You may want to verify by testing a subscribe to your blog and confirm what URL end users are seeing for your feed...
Scott Watermasysk on on 6.12.2008 at 9:40 AM
Hi Jake,
That could be true, but either way, it is now free.
Jason Gaylord on on 6.12.2008 at 9:43 AM
I'm assuming that the weblogs.asp.net app doesn't have this in place. That's a bummer because this really would be nice. I guess I'll have to move my blog. :)
Scott Watermasysk on on 6.12.2008 at 9:43 AM
Hi Rodrigo,
I just peaked at the source for the plugin. While I know very little PHP, it looks like they are doing a 302 redirect, so you are correct that you could nuke it at anytime.
However, this means everything someone requests your feed they are receiving a redirect, so you are causing more work for your server and the aggregator.
I would also suspect the major aggregator services will probably cheat and watch for this kind of redirect, especially for something that would be installed as often as that plugin.
Rodrigo Sieiro on on 6.12.2008 at 9:45 AM
@Steve
I didn't use my blog as an example before because it's in portuguese, but I did a little check now and found that the "alternate" link on my blog's HTML is pointing to "http://binario.thechip.net/feed/" (my address), but when I open it I'm redirected to FB's address.
I also checked my own subscription to my blog in Google Reader, and it's also pointing to my own address, altough I'm viewing my feed through FB.
So unless the user's reader picks the redirection and stores the destination address (FB), my solution should work, right?
BTW, you're the original plugin's author, right? Congrats!
Justin Miller on on 6.12.2008 at 10:03 AM
@Jake Good - FeedBurner Pro is free. It has been for a few months.
Tim Laughlin on on 6.12.2008 at 10:17 AM
Scott,
Great post great ideas. I doubt FeedBurner is going away, but keeping everything within your domain is a great feature. Like many I didn't realize this was now free. I tend to set it and forget when it comes to FeedBurner. But will go and make these changes. Of course my Telligent tools like CS and Graffiti will play nice!
Thanks
Tim
Jon Sagara on on 6.12.2008 at 10:26 AM
Great tip, Scott. Thanks.
Al Pascual on on 6.12.2008 at 11:39 AM
FeedBurner lost all my subscribers once:
alpascual.com/.../lost-every-subs
Terri Morton on on 6.12.2008 at 1:07 PM
Thanks a lot for this, Scott. I had already been using Feedburner on my Graffiti CMS site, and with the instructions on the Feedburner site I was able to implement MyBrand quite easily. Luckily my web host Server Intellect provides a DNS Zone Editor with Helm.
Caleb Jenkins on on 6.19.2008 at 2:24 PM
One issue that I've run in to is with certain themes (WP) that just point to the default feed without checking to see if that is the feed that you are actually using. The WP FB plug-in "fixes" that, but it would be much nicer to just use a MyBrand rss url... guess I'm going to be hacking some themes! :) Thanks for the post Scott!