WebProNews - FeedBurner

Google Integrates AdSense For Feeds, FeedBurner, Analytics

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:27:54 +0000

The desire to integrate products is strong at Google; it’s not hard to imagine that the company would eventually like to offer one great, big search/video/email/advertising ball. And today, it took a tiny step along that path by rolling together some analytics products.

A post on the AdSense for Feeds blog announced, “If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site.”

The post then continued, “Specifically, we will help you classify your links by tagging the Source as ‘feedburner,’ the Medium as the channel in which we sent out your feed such as ‘feed’ or ‘email,’ and the Content as the actual endpoint application in which the user viewed your feed content such as ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Yahoo! Mail.’”

More distribution endpoint labels are on the way, too.

Hopefully this update will help people earn a little extra money heading into the holidays. At the least, it may simplify FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds users’ lives a little, which would also represent a nice treat this time of year.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches Analytics For Mobile Apps

> Correcting Your Web Analytics Mistakes

> FeedBurner/Google Alum Goes To Twitter

FeedBurner/Google Alum Goes To Twitter

Doug Caverly — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:56:35 +0000

It looks like Twitter's filled another hole in its lineup of key executives. The title of Chief Operating Officer should go to Dick Costolo, who was the cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner and also did a stint at Google post-acquisition.

Costolo left Google about two months ago. His LinkedIn profile claims that, since then, he's been working for Monkey Beach Crime, Inc. (Chalk this odd tale up to Costolo's former career as a comedian).

Michael Arrington provided a more likely story by writing this afternoon, "Dick Costolo is Twitter's new chief operating officer, we've heard from multiple sources. . . . We'd heard he was looking to start a new company, but obviously Twitter swooped in and grabbed him."

Since he's worked for both a startup and a corporate giant with a $144 billion market cap, Costolo may be in a good position to help Twitter mature as a business. Experience on both ends of that scale is hard to come by and often quite valuable.

If - and this is an if that at least a few people are thinking about - Google tries to buy Twitter, Costolo could probably help there, too.

Report: FeedBurner Boss About To Quit Google

Doug Caverly — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:32:16 +0000

An important figure at Google may be about to leave, according to a new report. Dick Costolo, the cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner, is supposed to depart the corporation sometime this week.

Michael Arrington apparently confirmed the news today, and with regards to what Costolo has been up to since the $100 million FeedBurner acquisition, continued, "He currently reports to Neal Mohan, an exec in the Ads group, as the group product manager for social ads."

What Costolo will do next remains unknown. He may want to start another company, join an existing entity, or pursue some big idea.

Or, as a few select tweets of his sort of imply, Costolo (who's toured Australia, Singapore, and the UK as part of an improv comedy team) may just be preparing to spend more time with his family and generally take it easy.

Regardless, since Google acquired FeedBurner almost exactly two years ago (the official announcement was made on June 1st, 2007), this development doesn't say much about the search giant's ability to retain talent; it looks like Costolo's quitting within days of some contract's expiration date.

Feedburner Finally Becomes Part Of Google

Jordan McCollum — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:57:43 +0000

It’s been slowly coming for a very long time. Google announced that they’d acquired FeedBurner back in May 2007. Only eleven months later (*eye roll*), in April 2008, the two finally began their integration. And now it’s complete.

Last night, FeedBurner was the same website. Today, feedburner.com redirects (with masking) to google.com and www.feedburner.com gives the Google login:

Once you sign in, however, you find the old FeedBurner layout. If you’re a FeedBurner user, you’ve probably seen the promptings to migrate your feeds to Google. As the above screenshot assures you, there’s still time. In fact, the front-page–only change may just be a ploy to reluctant or lazy users to migrate faster.

Have you seen this change?

Comments

Feedburner and Adsense Together at Last

Chris Crum — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:49:18 +0000

The Adsense-meets-Feedburner era has officially begun. As mentioned here, the slow "Googlization" of Feedburner has gotten underway, and on Friday, the public got to see some Adsense ads in Feedburner feeds.

A couple months ago some publishers began displaying them, but now they are in full swing.

The beginning of Feedburner's Adsense era came just shortly after they closed down the FeedBurner Ad Network, a movie that Meghan Keane at Wired.com billed as "The beginning of the End for Feedbuner?"

A little harsh perhaps. With the popularity of Adsense added to the existing popularity of Feedburner, the move doesn't exactly sound the alarm of death in my ears.

Many are bound to be irritated by the move, but you're never going to make everybody happy.

I think Adsesne and Feedburner will get along with each other just fine.

According to previous comments on the Feedburner Weblog, publishers will be able to manage their feed ad units straight from the AdSense Setup tab, and track performance from the AdSense Report tab.

Sounds convenient to me.

Feedburner Incorporates AdSense Into Feeds

Chris Crum — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:33:53 +0000

About a month ago, it was hinted at that Feedburner would start incorporating AdSense into feeds as a product of its acquisition by Google.

It appears that time is approaching with feeds for some publishers getting ready to start displaying AdSense ads this week.

Steve over at the official Feedburner Weblog tells publishers what to expect:

So what will this mean for you? Well, publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content, with the added revenue that full back-fill coverage provides. And with AdSense, you'll know that your back-filled ads are using the strongest contextual ad engine, ensuring the most relevant and profitable ads are delivered to your subscribers. And yes, ads are also sold via Google's AdWords program.

This seems to just be the next logical step in the "Googlization" of Feedburner. Publishers will be able to manage their feed ad units straight from the AdSense Setup tab, and track performance from the AdSense Report tab.

"You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content units, or keep them totally separate," says Steve.

Feedburner promises more details with their full AdSense launch coming in the near future. .

FeedBurner Starting To Fly Google's Flag

Doug Caverly — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:47:24 +0000

Almost 11 months ago, Google announced its acquisition of FeedBurner. Now, FeedBurner finally seems ready to make some aesthetic changes and more serious overhauls.

Steve Olechowski

Steve Olechowski, the cofounder and COO of FeedBurner, wrote of things that will affect "selected publishers" in a note on the official FeedBurner blog. One difference is that the first people to be affected by the rollout will be able to sign in with their Google account info. Okay, so you're not wildly applauding yet.

Another adjustment is getting some genuinely strong reactions on the opposite end of the spectrum, though, and that's the planned integration of AdSense. Allen Stern observed, "The FeedBurner ad network was one of my absolute favorites over the past year - the CPMs were very high and the ad quality was exceptional.

He then continued, "Looks like the program will probably go bye-bye, replaced with the lovely tiny text ads that only pay on a click or worse, an acquisition. Over time what this will mean is that RSS feeds might become cluttered just like Web sites and the quality of ads will be lowered."

The way in which Google and FeedBurner handle this will have a huge impact on users' (and advertisers') responses, of course; opt-out buttons or especially well-targeted ads could smooth everything over. Unrelated changes are supposedly in the works, too, so users will have some incentive to stick around and see the final product.

Integrating Bidvertiser with FeedBurner, Blogger, WordPress

Manoj Jasra — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:37:17 +0000

BidVertiser has recently added the ability to integrate its services with FeedBurner, Blogger and WordPress:

WordPress Plugin to allow you to seamlessly embed the BidVertiser Ads in your feeds.

Solution for FeedBurner that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in your current FeedBurner address.

Solution for Blogger that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in the footer of each of your post feeds.

The integration is actually quite simple and literally takes less than a minute to setup. Below are the instruction for Blogger and Feed Burner:

Blogger (full instructions)

Click Settings -> Site Feed.

Copy your BidVertiser Feed Code to the Post Feed Footer area.

You must also set Enable Post Pages to Yes (in Archiving settings) and set Allow Blog eeds to Full.

Click Save Settings.

FeedBurner (full instructions)

Click Edit Feed Details.

Type your new feed address from BidVertiser under Original Feed.

Click Save Feed Details.

Comments

Tracking Blog Effectiveness

Lee Odden — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:48:28 +0000

There are a lot of data points that can be meaningful for tracking blog effectiveness.

That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.

Many of the metrics tools used for blogs are also used for basic web site analytics. That makes sense because many blog initiatives do not have the same kind of budget as web site marketing programs do. Therefore, the analytics employed tend to be low(er) or no cost.

Regardless of the purpose, I’ve assembled a list below of the various tools we use, or have tested to report onsite blog metrics. Pick the service or tool you like the most from the list below or something new for your unique purpose and please share in the comments. The list is in no particular order.

103bees - Free web stats (ad supported) up to 100k visits per month, then it’s $9

Enquisite - Free, extremely detailed web stats

Hittail - Provides suggested topics for your blog by keywords used in referral traffic

Crazy Egg - Provides overlay, list and heat map web stats

RobotReplay - Lets you record visitor actions on your site and play them back

Clicky - Web stats plus feed and Feedburner stats

Google Analytics - Web stats, not really the best for blogs but it’s free

StatCounter - Free web stats

Co.mments - Track comment threads starting on your blog and follow them elsewhere in a feed

Blog Tracker - Free from IceRocket but limited functionality

Performancing Metrics - Basic is Free, or $3.99 to $16.99 per month for more features

Site Meter - Basic Free and Premium versions $6.95 and up

Mint - Popular web stats with bloggers for $30 per site

MyBlogLog - Basic blog visitor stats and social networking. Free and paid versions.

Feedburner Stats - StandardStats Free, TotalStats $4.99/mo

Wordpress Stats - Free basic blog stats plugin for Wordpress blogs

Google Analytics and Feedburner Stats - Free plugin for Wordpress blogs

eXTReMe Tracking - Free web stats with a paid version for $4.50 per month

Web Stat - Many web stats features for $5/mo

TraceWatch - Free but you need access to your server which should be running PHP/MySQL

What are your favorite analytics tools for blogs?

Comments

28 Things Didn't Happen In 2007

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:18:39 +0000

A lot of predictions were made about 2007, just like every other year. Some came true, some didn't. Here's a list of what didn't happen.

Vertical search and niche social networks didn't take off

Well, there were many copycats, but not a lot of breakthrough players. Vertical search? Only if Google's integration of Universal Search counts. Niche networks? Though I predicted the beginning of this era, very little has happened. People are still flocking to the broad-appeal social networks, but that still could change.

RSS didn't go mainstream

A significant portion of the tech elite predicted this would be the year RSS went mainstream. And, well, it really didn't, despite Vista, which people are ditching in favor of a return to their beloved Windows XP. Ask anybody not closely following developments on the Web if they know what an RSS feed is. Bet you'll be surprised at how few have heard of one. But that too, may change in the coming year. You know, again.

Yahoo didn't buy Feedburner (or Facebook)

Several industry observers noted that somebody, probably Google, would buy Feedburner. And that's exactly what happened, perhaps another sign that RSS is on the brink once again.

Online video didn't prove to be a moneymaker

Blinkx and Brightcove, MetaCafe and DailyMotion all made headway in 2007, but all anybody talks about in regard to online video is YouTube, which possibly may have nailed down the right balance of user-generated content and monetization. But definitive success remains to be seen. Bandwidth costs are a bit of a concern, too. Who knows? Maybe Hulu will strike it rich?

GOOG didn't split or slow down

Google didn't split, but is also didn't reach $1,000 per share as some predicted. But there's always next year, and hovering around $700 is not too shabby.

Candidates still didn't answer questions

At the end of 2006 the term "YouTube Presidency" was already being tossed around. And sure enough, 2007 saw the first YouTube debates for both Democrat and Republican frontrunners. That means that YouTube not only became vital for the expansion of user-generated content, but also as an agent for social change. But candidates still dodged tough questions like they were playing full-contact lawn darts.

SecondLife didn't get a second wind

SecondLife seemed unstoppable in 2006, and for part of 2007, spawning its own currency and legal philosophies. Companies began experimenting with building their own SecondLife areas, and thieves and vandals ran amok, too. At the end of 2007, who's still talking about it? Hardly anybody, and the virtual tumbleweeds seem to be increasing as members seem to spending less and less time there -- their initial infatuation wearing thin. Jury's still out though. The site has seen some positive growth, just the not the explosive growth everyone was counting on.

Widgets didn't falter

Widgets certainly did explode onto the scene in 2007. After Facebook opened up its platform to developers, the applications began pouring in. And then Facebook users started virtual food fights. Sophisticated usage or not, you have to chalk one up for the success of widgets in social networking.

Google didn't bust the office block

When people are uninstalling Vista and replacing it with Windows XP, you might expect any competing office product to gain ground against Microsoft Office, too. Everybody oohed and ahed over Google's new presentation offering, but then went right on using PowerPoint. Because that's what you use for presentations, everybody knows it. Google gets an 'A' for effort and for presenting alternatives, but as Microsoft is learning with Vista, the public seems rather reluctant to change the status quo.

Unless it's for Apple products, that is.

AdCenter and Panama didn't catch AdSense

Nobody, contrary to predictions that MSN AdCenter and Yahoo's Panama would gain ground against AdWords and AdSense, really put up a much of a fight against Google. Google continues to gain search share and search advertising dollars while its two biggest competitors still struggle to keep up.

People didn't switch to Windows Live

Windows Live, Windows What? That's different from MSN how? No one really knows or cares that much outside of Redmond, unless they actually kept Vista and didn't switch the default search to Google.

Google didn't release an operating system (again)

No, there's still no traditional operating system from Google to compete with Microsoft and Apple. But there is Android, which Google is developing for mobile phones, so there may finally be some vindication for those who've been waiting now for years.

People didn't abandon their TV sets

Internet TV? Well, not quite yet, though TV made prodigious use of Internet content. Baby-steps have been made toward the transition with releases like AppleTV, network websites and mini-shows for the web. Verizon and AT&T are both banking on television over fiber connections. The vast majority still get their TV from broadcast, cable, or satellite, but the winds of change are a-blowin'.

VoIP didn't take over everything.

In fact, eBay wrote off Skype as overvalued and Vonage was sued by everybody within arm's reach. 2007 wasn't so great for VoIP, but who knows about 2008? Maybe, maybe.

The pageview didn't die

The pageview, as a metric, hasn't died. It may not be as strong as it once was with new measures like user engagement or new formats like AJAX becoming more popular, but the pageview is still used for many business models, especially those selling advertising. Eyeballs are still eyeballs.

Newspapers didn't die, either

But they might be sick. There's still a generational split when it comes to where people prefer to get their news, but even that appears to be dwindling. The younger crowd no doubt prefers digital formats while the older crowd, which still clings to email too, likes the morning paper and a cup of coffee.

Google didn't settle with Viacom

When Google acquired YouTube late in 2006, their was a resounding chorus that Google just bought itself a world of copyright problems. Sure enough, Viacom slapped them with a billion-dollar lawsuit which still hasn't been settled despite Google's effort to be more vigilant about fighting copyright infringement. YouTube's still the best place to find anything you might have missed on MTV.

The Web 2.0 bubble didn't burst.

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel didn't cut it

And neither did Yahoo, for that matter. Semel is out, and Yahoo is, well, still a distant second.

AOL didn't have another privacy gaffe

But Facebook did. John Battelle nailed it when he predicted another privacy fiasco on the AOL search query level. Facebook Beacon is the big winner at being the big loser.

The iPhone didn't bring the mobile web to everybody

Despite the drooling, ecstatic reception of the iPhone, mobile Internet still has a ways to go in the US. The technology is the starting point, just like with the iPod, but to continue, access to the mobile web needs to become cheaper. As soon as Verizon and AT&T stop liking money so much, (or when Google busts the block) expect the mobile web to really explode.

A major newspaper didn't fold up its print division in favor of online publishing.

But magazine InfoWorld did, and the San Francisco Chronicle cited a growing online news market as the chief catalyst for laying off a large portion of its news staff.

HD-DVD didn't win

In the HD-DVD/Blu-ray format war, nobody's won yet. And there may not be a winner, either.

The NYT and the WSJ didn't stay snooty

The New York Times decided content wants to be free and opened up its Times Select articles to the online world. And then, the Wall Street Journal opened up, too. A trend? Seems that way.

Digital rights management didn't get anywhere

DRM didn't get much love, even from record companies. Three major record labels announced they were getting rid of DRM.

The Democrats didn't do much of anything

The Democrats didn't really do anything about Net Neutrality or other web-related policies. They talked about it, made threats, wrote letters, but never managed to get legislation out the door. Maybe next year, if not too distracted by the elections again.

The Web did not come to a grinding halt

The Internet didn't crash because of video. They predicted it for 2007, and are still predicting it for 2008 and beyond, but gridlock didn't happen, and as more and more bandwidth is added and fiber expands, it's probably not going to happen.

Amazon's stock didn't crash

It more than doubled instead. Though an analyst noted that "AMZN is a stock that continues to live on borrowed time," when it was at $38.50, two months later, it's selling at $95.

Social Media Thanksgiving List

Lisa Braziel — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:33:59 +0000

In the spirit of the season - we’ve compiled a few things we are thankful for around here at Ignite.

As always, feel free to add to the list

Enjoy!

The “human genome project” Pandora. Without it, Lisa’s musical taste would suffer more than it already does.

We are all thankful for Gene’s glorious dreds, being able to capture this picture, and his fluency in coding languages.

Jim is thankful for people over 40 who join Facebook, people who don’t giggle when he says Twitter, and his small but growing number of Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers and followees, Plaxo connections, Digg fans, and most of all, people who link back to us. (On a side note - Lisa is amazed at how unabashedly Jim has started shilling for new online friends with link lists like this and will be thankful when he gets stalkers.)

Common Craft, who consistently break things down in creative, comprehensible ways and for creating helpful videos like this.

Feedburner and Google Analytics. These have provided us with hours of free entertainment.

Clients who “get” it, or come to us in order to “get it”.

Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger for writing Cluetrain Manifesto.

A good Technorati “Authority” rating, that puts the Ignite blog ahead of 99.825039% of all blogs in the world. (Not that we’re counting or anything….)

Blogs like ExperienceCurve, Glen Allsopp over at at ViperChill, and Enterprise 2.0’s FastForwardBlog.

Blendtec. For being brave enough to blend an iphone, a rake, and a can of Easy Cheese - and for proving the power of social media marketing.

On a final note, we’d like to thank all of you for reading, commenting, linking, and doing what you do. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Comments

Tag:

Webmaster Central's Future

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:23:19 +0000

Webmasters Google Go-to-guy Matt Cutts has a post in his blog which asks all suggestions on improving Webmaster Central. After all improvements were made based on suggestions given by webmasters.

Improvements include:

Site owners can now see their own backlinks.

Verify an IP address is really Googlebot done but by using a reverse+forward DNS lookup.

An option to easily remove URLs from the index. Google’s URL removal tool has been ported into the webmaster console, and it allows site owners to see and revoke their self-removals.

Show how many people are subscribed to my website’s feeds in Google Reader: DONE, but not in the console. Google Reader now reports these numbers when fetching feeds. Feedburner will give you even more stats for free.

Communicate with webmasters in an authenticated way: DONE. Just last week, Google added a webmaster message center provide authenticated communication with site owners. The Webmaster Central team has done of ton of other stuff in the last few months as well.

Upcoming features will be based on the list below:

More information about penalties or other scoring issues

Tools for detecting or reporting duplicate content

Show links on your site that are broken

Score the crawlability or accessibility of pages

Tool to help move from one domain to a new domain

Tell Google the correct country or language for a site

Show PageRank numbers instead of none/low/medium/high

Diagnostic wizard for common site problems

Some type of rank checking

Show causes of 404 errors

A way to list supplemental result pages

Option to "disavow" backlinks from or to a site

Fetch a page as Googlebot to verify correct behavior

Tell Google a parameter doesn't matter

More documentation and examples

Ability to show/download all pages from a site (e.g. if your server crashed)

Integrate "Add URL" feature.

If you have more ideas, post your suggestions at his blog.

Comments

Feedburner and Blogger

Stephen Pitts — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:26:15 +0000

Feedburner, recently acquired by Google, has taken a step for their users using another of Google’s products, Blogger.

I know what many are thinking…

Blogger and Wordpress.org blogs are for fair-weather or social bloggers… but I think that anyone that contributes (not copies) content to the Internet are valuable.

From Burning Questions:

…we are very excited to announce the immediate availability of one-click redirection for Blogger Blogspot blogs (note our fine use of both alliteration and first syllable congruence).

If you host your content on a Blogger blog with a blogspot.com address (or use Blogger’s “custom domain” feature), you can now redirect your native Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed (quite easily, might we add). Gone are the muggy, languorous days of wrestling with “autodiscovery” tags in foreboding corners of your Blogger template code or hacking through this tangled discussion thread for a glimpse of configuration clarity.

OK, so Google is looking out for their users, right? Well, I think that any and everyone should be able to track their users, and those on a blogger domain that want to track their readers are using it for more than mere “social purposes.”

I will be honest, I started on blogger, something that I wish I could have changed, but I think that it does have a valuable place on the Internet.

Comments

Google Feeds Free FeedBurner MyBrand

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:00:02 +0000

One of the services from feed distributor FeedBurner will be available for free, thanks to their new owners, Google. The MyBrand service offered by FeedBurner allows site publishers to serve feeds and maintain their domain brand, instead of having the more generic FeedBurner domain appear. Formerly a for-pay service, MyBrand is now available for no charge.

Ionut Alex Chitu at Google Operating System welcomed the change in terms. He noted the service used to cost $3-$14 per month, based on the number of feeds coming from an account.

"With MyBrand, publishers can continue to take advantage of all of FeedBurner’s services, but provide a transparent experience by running everything through their domain (e.g. feeds.yoursitenamehere.com) instead of ours," FeedBurner said in its service FAQ.

Site publishers who value their brands, and that should include anyone with a modicum of marketing savvy, will want to activate MyBrand for their accounts. FeedBurner has earned a place as a valuable service for websites that publish feeds, and MyBrand makes those feeds more valuable now.

Do Not Follow Google's Mistakes

Stephen Pitts — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:17:48 +0000

This is not an attempt to bash Google. However, you can sometimes learn what not to do from some very successful people and products.

Google has been extremely active in the last year adding services and developing products for users and webmasters alike, however, in some instances they have missed the mark.

Here are some of the news, new and improved products from Google:

Dell to Build Google Search Appliances

Clean Energy and Green Technology at Google

Google Launches Plug-In Hybrid Car Initiative and Unveils Solar Installation

Google Allows Webmasters to Report Spam in Index

Google Improves Calendar

Google Launches Universal Search

Google Acquires FeedBurner

Google Gears Brings Online Content to Offline Applications

Hot Trends Added to Google Trends

Google Improves Analytics

Google Acquires DoubleClick

Google Working with LG on the new “Google Phone”

Google Gives Webmasters a Better View of Links

Google has done so much, and they are setting a pace for themselves, online and in the financial arenas, that will be difficult to maintain, hence the partnerships and acquisitions.

OK, back to the point!

If you can’t build it, buy it… No, this is not the lesson. The real lesson is: When you have an idea, keep working to improve it!

What I am not saying: Google fails to improve on products and services.

What I am saying: Google can loose focus too!

I’m not saying that they have, however, some services don’t appear to be a priority for Google. Specific point, Google Reader. Back in December 2006, Matt Cutts posted about “What we want from Google for Christmas.” So, I thought about the products and services that I use that are provided by Google: GMail, Reader, Webmaster Central, Analytics, AdWords, AdSense, the list goes on. What I wanted to find was something that I could give Google feedback for improvement. One little function that could or should be included in a product that I use. I provided my response, search functionality in Google Reader.

Seems so novel, search capabilities from a search engine, but Reader still lacks this feature. I don’t know the difficulty in providing this for users, but it seems like a simple feature for the number 1 search portal.

The moral:

1. Don’t forget about your users when developing your website/service/widget.

2. Ideas are great, but don’t pick up a new one until you have done your best on each one before.

3. Always be open to feedback. Sometimes your users will give you that little something that will propel you to the top!

Comments

Tag:

Performancing Metrics Rises From Dead

Thomas McMahon — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:16:08 +0000

I’m constantly looking for a nice, quick and easy blog stats. Google Analytics is a great program, but it’s a bit complex for my daily checks. I’ve tried quite a few and recently Performancing Metrics came back online. It’s not really a new service, but it is a great step forward.

Performancing Metrics now uses Clicky stats as its core. It wasn’t built from the ground up, but rather re-branded. I’m not sure what it offers as unique, but regardless, it’s still a nice stats program with the promises of unique features yet to come.

So what makes Performancing Metrics different? Well it’s more about what is happening now then rather aggregating data. It’s great for seeing what’s happening today, but not great for finding out what happened over the past month.

The dashboard shows incoming links, unique visitors, searches and top content. None of it is older than today and it’s a nice overview.

Digging into the analytics a bit you can get visitor information like country, web browser, screen size and OS among others. The actions tab will let you see the visitor’s information including the time and date, what they clicked on, the web browser and OS they used and referring information. It’ll even count downloads, outbound links and FeedBurner subscribers.

Then there is Spy which is really cool. It shows you, in real time, how others are interacting with your site. I had my co-worker go to the site and click on a post title. As she did that, the Spy area in Performancing Metrics told me when she arrived and what she clicked on as it happened. Very cool, yet a huge time waster.

There are two downsides to Performancing Metrics. The first is the daily limit of 1,000 page views on a free account. For $20/year you can have 10,000 daily page views and if you need more, you can spend $50/year for up to 50,000 daily page views.

The second downside is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to finding your top keywords, searches or referring sites for a specific period of time. What’s the top referring domain for June? Well, that’s why I suggest having Google Analytics installed also.

Overall, I really like Performancing Metrics. It’s a great way to see what’s happening on your blog right now. It has some great features and is definitely a step up from the old metrics program. However, you should also have Google Analytics installed as Performancing Metrics does lack some features you or your blog consultant may want.

Google Crowned King Of Acquisitions

Doug Caverly — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:22:31 +0000

Regular WebProNews readers have probably already guessed this, but for what it’s worth, a new report has confirmed all our suspicions: Google takes over more companies than just about anybody else out there.

“For years,” writes Scott Austin for Dow Jones, “Cisco Systems Inc. has been the most prolific acquirer of venture-backed start-ups, pocketing 22 such companies since 2004, according to industry tracker VentureOne. But Google has emerged at the top of the list so far this year, acquiring five venture-backed start-ups to Cisco’s four.”

Granted, five isn’t as impressive a number as 22 (though the numbers are from admittedly different periods of time), but Austin adds, “[Google’s] showing no sign of stopping, as the search outfit looks for companies that fit its overarching mission: ‘To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’”

And as some recent purchases demonstrate - think PeakStream, Panoramio, GreenBorder, and FeedBurner, just in the last month or so - there are a lot of corporations that apparently fit into that mission. Austin isn’t kidding when he describes Google as “the cash-oozing search giant.”

Is this a good thing? Well, definitely, if you happen to have a company that you’re looking to sell off. As for Google (and its competitors), it’s a little harder to say if this spending spree is the best use of money. There’s no doubting that the search engine company’s plans have worked so far, however.

Feedburner Users Have 8 Days To Hide From Google

Nathan Weinberg — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:00:30 +0000

Feedburner is informing users they have until June 15, eight days from now, to opt-out of giving Google data on their accounts.

Users have until the 15th before Google’s privacy policy become’s Feedburner’s, and Google gets access to RSS feed usage data, ad data, and anything else owned by Feedburner. Those who do not want Google having access to that data, can choose to opt out before then, which will result in their account being deleted and all statistical data and history being purged.

Really, there isn’t a whole lot to worry about. There aren’t going to be a bunch of Google engineers sitting around going, “Ooh, look, Steve Rubel has that number of feed subscribers using Bloglines. Tee hee”. But it’s really cool of Feedburner to give paranoid users the option of getting out if they really wanted to. It’s the sort of thing that should be adopted in principle, if not in law, for future acquisitions. Imagine if a service you used was acquired by a company know for selling user data to spammers. Wouldn’t you want a week to get the hell out?

Comments

Feed Optimization Tip: Don't Forget FeedFlare

Thomas McMahon — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:31:15 +0000

FeedBurner is the only service (that I know of) that will re-publish a blogs feed in order to get feed stats. Being such a great service, many users use it only to figure out how many readers their blogs have.

However, FeedFlare is a great addition to any FeedBurner feed as it builds interaction and social media links into each post.

FeedFlare allows publishers to easily build “interactivity” into the content they create, making it simple for subscribers to tag, email or share their content with others. Publishers can include a variety of services including a live display of the number of comments to each post, the ability to email the author directly and show the number of blogs that link to their item.

To enable FeedFlare, login to your FeedBurner account, go to the Optimize tab then choose FeedFlare from the left column. You can then check items that you want to display in your feed.

I suggest adding at least the following:

Email This - Send the post via email to a friend or a co-worker.

Comments Count - You may be able to increase click thoughs if people know there are comments on your post.

Save to del.icio.us - Del.icio.us is one of the biggest social bookmarking sites, lets make it easy for readers to save your posts there.

Digg This - Ahh Digg. Everyone is obsessed with getting in Digg. This nice part about this button is it also shows you the number of Diggs and if there are any Digg comments.

Stumble It - StumbleUpon is quickly becoming a great way to find new sites. If a users bookmarks your post in StumbleUpon, you’ll have a better chance of getting additional StumbleUpon traffic.

There are many other FeedFlare choices too. The trick here is to pick the 5 or 6 that will best work for your blog. Don’t go overboard and put as many as you can as it might deter people from reading the feed. Also, don’t just put the Digg button on because everyone else does. If you don’t feel a FeedFlare will work well for your blog, don’t add it.

By adding FeedFalre to your FeedBurner feed, you are making it easier for users to interact with your posts. Visitors don’t always make it to your site to read comments or hit one of the social bookmark buttons. Brining the options to the readers will increase the chances of them sharing one of your posts and getting you additional exposure.

Comments

Google Swallows Up FeedBurner

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:09:42 +0000

Google has announced it has acquired Chicago-based FeedBurner, a deal that had been rumored to be taking place since last week. Terms of the purchase have not been disclosed.

On the Google Blog, Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management writes," For those of you who aren't bloggers, podcasters, or feed creators, Chicago-based FeedBurner is a leading provider of feed distribution and management tools."

"A web feed is a way for online publishers to syndicate their content and deliver it straight to readers. Each day, FeedBurner delivers feeds to millions of users around the world and offers unique and useful tools for publishers to analyze, optimize, and monetize their content."

"Further, FeedBurner offers a feed advertising platform for advertisers to reach engaged feed readers through targeted in-feed ads and innovative techniques like RSS feed-driven ads."

FeedBurner CEO Dan Costolo had this to say about the deal in a blog post, "We like our chances. We are confident that we are going to be a part of the company that can best deliver the most comprehensive suite of services to publishers".

" We are confident that we're going to continue to have fun and innovate for customers as rapidly as possible. We are confident and hopeful that you'll look at your feed dashboard soon and say to yourself "Well, *that* was a good idea!"

The Month of Acquisitions

Manoj Jasra — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:46:04 +0000

There were numerous partnerships and acquisitions in the month of May, which included a lot of dollars changing hands. Let's look at some of the major deals that went down this past month

Ebay Purchases StumbleUpon for $75 million

FeedBurner Sold! for $100 million to Google

Google Buys Panoramio, Photo Mapping Software

Fox Interactive Media (NWS) Acquires Photobucket and Flektor

Google buys GreenBorder Technologies for more security in Google Apps

Microsoft buys aQuantive Inc, for 6 billion US dollars

CBS buys Last.fm

AOL Buys Mobile Ad Network

Microsoft Buys CareerBuilder; Google Interested In SimplyHired

AOL Buys German Ad Server Adtech

Yahoo Fully Acquires Right Media (April 30th)

Facebook Partners with Oodle for Classifieds

Google and Microsoft seem to be positioning themselves strategically in order to keep up with each other in the war for Internet dominance. I expect to see this trend of acquisitions continuing strong into the summer.

Do leave a comment if I have missed any major partnerships or purchases.

Comments

Tag:

Should You NOINDEX Your RSS Feeds?

Eric Enge — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:07:38 +0000

One of the questions you see swirling about the forums and blogs these days is whether or not you should Noindex your RSS feeds to avoid duplicate content problems. The source of the problem is that RSS feeds are being crawled by the search engines. In addition, many people are now recommending that you include the entire content of your articles directly in your feed. You can read more about this in my recent interview of Rick Klau of FeedBurner.

So if the search engine sees the content on your site, and also sees it in your feed, will that being seen as duplicate content? There certainly have been instances of finding RSS feeds in the search results of the search engines. For those of you worried about this possibility, you can see Yahoo’s spec for Noindexing RSS feeds here. My understanding is that both Google and Yahoo! will honor this Noindex request of your feed.

But let’s step back, and think about how search engines try to deal with duplicate content. They are always trying to figure out who the authoritative source of the content is. It should be pretty obvious to the search engine when it’s crawling an RSS feed, and it should also be relatively obvious that the RSS feed for a site’s content is not the authoritative search.

In my interview with Rick Klau, and my earlier conversation with Google’s Adam Lasnik, we talked about this issue.

Rick points out, as I did above, that it’s really obvious to a search engine when it is crawling a feed, and that feeds are not the authoritative source of content. In addition, providing a feed often helps a search engine more rapidly find new content on your site.

Adam Lasnik commented that during his time at Google that he had not hard of any instances of a site being negatively affected by a duplicate content issue with an RSS feed.

Based on this input, I would conclude that there is extremely little risk in letting your feed get indexed. After I first learned about the issue, I did move forward and Noindex our feeds here at STC. But then, after the conversations with Rick and Adam, we became convinced that it’s just not a problem, and this is the recommendation we make to our clients as well.

Comments

Tag:

Feedburner Fears After Google's Grab

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 24 May 2007 10:05:46 +0000

Things change when a large, publicly traded company acquires a smaller firm. Google's $100 million pickup of Feedburner has elicited some negative speculation.

Feedburner Fears After Google's Grab

The purchase of Feedburner by Google presents an interesting scenario for the growth of RSS feedreading adoption. It's been our opinion that such adoption will get a boost from Microsoft, which has built RSS feed technology into its newest builds of Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Vista.

Feedburner makes feeds easier for the common Internet surfer to use. Microsoft's products will encourage a lot of people to subscribe to feeds. Google's acquisition lets them see all of the Feedburner subscriptions have, whether through a Microsoft product or any other reader.

With Microsoft putting feedreading into the hands of millions of computer users, Google just has to encourage feed publishers to use Feedburner, already an outstanding product.

See what just happened there? As Todd Cochrane noted at Geek News Central, this is one more step toward Google closing the loop and knowing a lot more about people than they may realize:

Google has been trying to close the loop for a long time and while this purchase is smart for them, they are now going to know more about some people than their own family members may. They are going to be able to share that data, cross correlate and target you on so many levels that if you look at what they are collecting already is pretty damn scary.

Amit Agarwal lamented the purchase, as it likely means the end of the Feedburner Advertising Network. He hopes Google stays away from other ad options:

While Adsense is a successful program, you still need to diversify the revenue streams - depending only on one player sounds bit of a risk even when that player is Google. What advertising choices would be left for small website publishers, other than Adsense, if Google expresses interest in other popular blog advertising networks like Adify, BlogAds or Tribalfusion?

The choice could be Google, Google, or more Google if that happens.

Google/Feedburner Deal Confirmed

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:22:24 +0000

No official word from Google yet, but one blogger (and hence, a slew of others piling on) is reporting that the search engine is in the final stage of buying Feedburner.

The news comes from TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who confirms via "a source close to the deal" that Google dropped $100 million in cash on the table. Arrington says the deal should close in 2-3 weeks.

The rumor that Google was looking to pick up Feedburner began circulating last Friday, and was first confirmed by Valleywag's inside sources on Monday. The burning question, as posed on Valleywag, is "why would Google pay such a high multiple, about 10 times revenues, for the startup?"

One very interesting answer to that question is the affect Feedburner data could have on result relevancy. Since Feedburner is a subscription service, the acquisition could help Google to know better which blogs are legitimate and which ones are not.

Andy Beard goes on at length about the good and bad points for WebProNews. Though "not a huge number," Google would also acquire Feedburner's 422,000 + publishers and their subscribers.

Whatever Google's motivation, the acquisition would fit right in with the recent Silicon Valley zeitgeist – it's been an acquisition frenzy lately, especially from Google and Microsoft.

Google & Feedburner - The Good & Bad

Andy Beard — Wed, 23 May 2007 13:24:40 +0000

Rumours have been surfacing for the last few days that Google might be buying FeedBurner for around $100M.

Listed below you will find 7 reasons Google and Feedburner are a perfect match, and 7 equally compelling reasons we should be concerned.

Match Made In Heaven?

There are some very positive reasons that this is an ideal match and I am going to concentrate on those first:-

Existing Subscriber Statistics - Google mentioned that subscriber statistics are part of their calculations for relevance for Google Blog Search in recently released patent details. Whilst I have determined it is not currently a major ranking factor for blog search, Google are moving down a path of providing personal search results and are continually looking to improve Blog Search

Integrate FeedBurner With Blogger - Google look to provide useful services for their existing portfolio of products, and Blogger provides them with lots of advertising space. Many of Google's competitors offer some kind of feed statistics (Wordpress.com), and Google need to do the same.

Integrate FeedBurner with Google Analytics - I have seen this discussed slightly, but no one hit the nail on the head. Currently it is impossible to track conversions into an RSS subscriber in the same way you can with email subscriptions. This is a major stumbling block for the future of RSS within marketing.

Intellectual Property - lots of the things that Feedburner do such as their advertising system, feedflares, redirects for RSS feeds, and maybe even aspects of their tracking technology could well have a patent pending, though whatever applications they may have made they are keeping the lid on.

422,717 publishers - It is not a huge number, and is very easy to increase with an integration with Blogger. It is certainly many more than any current direct competitor. People are waving around that $100M is a good price based upon 10x earnings, and 6x the VC investment of around 17M in Feedburner. The most important statistic is that probably 99% of feed publishers currently don't automatically qualify for Feedburner's advertiser program. Certainly with 1000 subscribers the "monetize" tab is still closed for me.

Economy of Scale (Publishers) - it is hard to provide tracking for advertisers over 1000s of blogs, and also to handle the payment infrastructure for smaller publishers. That is probably one of the primary reasons FeedBurner up until now has only had monetization options for popular blogs, or "network feeds".

Economy of Scale (Advertisers) - Google has a massive amount of advertising inventory, it is just a question of adding the ability to advertise on the blog content network, especially with their CPA offers which would be ideal for feeds

Match Made In Hell?

In many ways I am a Google fan, I use their search primarily, I use Adwords, Adsense, have their toolbar installed, couldn't live without Gmail, and I am trying my best to not get sucked into 200 feeds in Google Reader.
I am also a FeedBurner Fan, I have a paid subscription to their "Total Stats", and have developed a few simple Feedflares.

Unfortunately I am not overly enthusiastic about Google buying FeedBurner for a number of very serious reasons.

Slow Development - I don't expect faster development of features above integration with Google's existing services. For me that is worrying especially as someone who publishes commercial content.

Legal Compliance - I have been waiting for 5 months for email subscriptions that fully comply with CAN-SPAM and SI 3429 of 2006.
This is something that is possible with Feedblitz and Zookoda, but based on my current research, FeedBurner has the edge on delivery rates. What is needed is an interface to customize emails. Would we really see new features faster once aquired?

Ability to add Copyright information - the only option currently is a custom feed flare, but that is a graphic easily stripped by people abusing your content. Then again most of the Blogospere seemed to think a few months ago that no one has a right to copyright their feeds, and that once you publish content by RSS, you have no claim over it.

Bugs in the API - these haven't been fixed for months, such as the ability to have a "clean" link within a feedflare unit.

Squashing Competition - FeedBurner haven't got a huge amount of direct competiton, but certainly Feedvertising is competition for the monetization of feeds, so is Blogkits, and Zookoda owned by Pay Per Post will likely offer advertising for email subscribers.
Whilst both Feedburner and Feedvertising seem to think that Techcrunch is displaying Ads from their network, it seems to me Techcrunch are using Feedvertising to primarily display links to their own sites. See here that Techcrunch is listed under blogs on Feedburner.

Poor Support - Google's support unfortunately isn't the greatest, especially when they suggest responding in "Google Groups" from their blog.

Here are 2 very specific examples
- Disclosure with Referral Units - Google made a clarification to their policy on referral units on the Adsense blog. At the bottom of the post, they invite you to "discuss".
  Chris Hunt raised a very important question
  
  But what if I want to recommend the product, but feel it's unethical
  to do so without telling my readers that I'm getting paid for it:
  
  "Click this button, it's a really cool product (full disclosure: I
  receive a commission of $2 if you follow this link)"
  
  For me this is a case of deja vu, because I was raising the same questions about the referral units and disclosure back in January.
- I have raised issues and technical problems a number of times in the Google Toolbar Buttons Group, and no help is forthcoming.
Whilst Feedburner support is currently better than Google's, I can't see their support improving if they are acquired.

Fractured Lines of Communication - Feedburner are currently proactive in monitoring the blogosphere, and reacting by giving feedback - whilst I am sure Google monitor blogs heavily, unless you are a high traffic blog it is very rare to get any feedback

What I write today probably won't make the slightest bit of difference to whether a purchase is made, or the eventual outcome. I am not a gadget blog with 600K+ subscribers - this won't be an Applegate.

FeedBurner have a massive market share, very little competition, but very low penetration compared to the total number of active real blogs worldwide.
Before being acquired I would really prefer them to have some very healthy competition. Competition stimulates growth, awareness and features.

So do you really want Google to buy FeedBurner?

*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

Comments

Attention and User Acceptance Data

Aaron Wall — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:58:39 +0000

There is a rumor that Google may buy Feedburner for roughly $100 million dollars. If they do so, they have another way to understand if blogs are real or not. Few people subscribe to or link at a fake blog or unoriginal blog. Owning the leading reader, the leading feed provider, the leading analytics product, and the leading ad platform should give them a pretty good idea of what is real.

Links flow easily across blogs, so Google may eventually judge that portion of the web looking for other signs of quality that require more commitment than a quick mention. As they get better at determining real from fake they can surface the best few blogs and submerge the rest, all while displaying more content from other verticals, like books.

Ranking at about #120 in the search results I just saw a book about a topic I did a link bait for. It was freely available online and over 300 pages in length. Luckily my link bait is more aesthetically pleasing, modern, and was linked to from major newspapers. If I launched the same link bait a year or two later that book probably would have beat me. I am not sure if I would have been able to buy enough exposure to override Google's desire to make the organic results overtly informational and from editorially trusted sources.

Comments

FeedBurner Deal Could Be Good For Google

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:57:09 +0000

The rumor that Google is eyeballing FeedBurner for a cool $100 million has folks talking about what that could mean for Google's search result relevancy, and the company's ability to identify splogs, differentiating them from legitimate blogs.

The GoogleBurner deal, at this point is still a diapered rumor, first appearing late last week.

As Doug Caverly reported, the announcement has supposedly been delayed due to the trouble the Mountain View giant has encountered trying to close the DoubleClick buy.

Though it's still (presumably solid) rumor, search engine optimization experts are already contemplating what a FeedBurner acquisition would mean to their business.

Though it would further entrench Google in the RSS realm, the relationship could increase relevancy and give Google's magic algorithm a better feel for blog authority.

Technorati's been the blog search engine mainstay for most of us, consistently offering better results and a better interface than the others. FeedBurner could only help Google Blog Search establish a lasting presence.

SEO Book's Aaron Wall explains why:

Few people subscribe to or link at a fake blog or unoriginal blog. Owning the leading reader, the leading feed provider, the leading analytics product, and the leading ad platform should give them a pretty good idea of what is real.

And suddenly splogs become a lot easier to combat. Thousands of made-for-AdSense and bogus blogs are set up daily to glean all the click-pennies the Web has to offer.

But subscriber information gives Google a clearer picture of what's true and what's not.

Not everyone's convinced that it'll be the splog-fighter it could be touted as.

Critics note that as soon as word gets out that Google is using FeedBurner to influence search results, a whole new spam is likely to emerge.

Rumors: Google, Yahoo, May Be Buying

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:52:28 +0000

Takeover rumors are heating up like the weather, as both Yahoo and Google may open their dainty pocketbooks and pick up a couple of companies. These rumors and four bucks will get you the half-caff, double foam vanilla hazelnut latte at your favorite coffeehouse. Google may have a jones for RSS syndication service provider Feedburner, while Yahoo could be ready for a big social networking buy in Bebo.

Valleywag cited Sam Sethi at Vecosys, who offered the usual caveat about rumors in disclosing the revelation about Google. But Valleywag put a price to the rumor of $100 million for Feedburner.

"So, why would Google pay such a high multiple, about 10 times revenues, for the startup?" Valleywag asked. They likened the proposed deal to the Urchin/Google Analytics purchase as one that ties independent publishers to Google.

Yahoo could be spending a billion dollars on Bebo. The British-based social networking site could represent Yahoo's long-awaited entry into this arena, long dominated by MySpace. Bebo has a band focus, and loading a profile page will likely kick off a music track or video that sounds almost but not entirely unlike Alice Deejay.

Britain's Telegraph claims this deal will happen. If it does, it would be in the neighborhood of the offer Yahoo made to Facebook, which laughed off the $1 billion as far too low.

Rumor: Google to Buy FeedBurner?

Andy Beal — Fri, 18 May 2007 20:49:36 +0000

It’s Friday, which must mean it’s time to crank up the rumor mill to “11″ and get speculative.

Vecosys is reporting from a “very trusted source” that Google is getting ready to buy Feedburner, in order to gain access to their RSS ad network.

The delay in announcing the deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal.

It’s really no more than a rumor at this stage, but it would certainly be a smart move by Google. With more of the web being viewed by RSS readers, Feedburner provides a great platform for advertisers to reach a new audience. In addition, think of all the great data Feedburner is collecting about not only RSS feeds, but web sites in general.

Comments

Tag:

Rumor Mill: Google To Acquire FeedBurner

Doug Caverly — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:26:52 +0000

It’s just an unconfirmed rumor at this point, but Sam Sethi has “just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner.” Considering that Microsoft just spent $6 billion on aQuantive, this purchase would certainly be a good way for Google to steal back some headlines.

It would also be a good way for the Mountain View-based corporation to bolster its presence in the realm of RSS Feeds; after all, the 2007 SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards just honored FeedBurner with first place in the “Feed Management” section. The service received five stars each in the categories of usability, usefulness, and interface and design.

So . . . why the lack of official word? “The delay in announcing the deal . . . is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal,” writes Sethi.

He continues, “Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts . . . . So RSS has effectively eliminated the potential value of AdSense and DoubleClick because the majority of people never view them.”

Yet if the search engine corporation bought FeedBurner, “Google could then start to serve their own ads (Adsense or DoubleClick) into the RSS stream.”

The Web seems to be responding positively to the idea of a deal between Google and FeedBurner, even if Irishman Ken McGuire begins his post with the exclamation, “Good Lord.” Chip Griffin considers both the good and bad, and yet has already dubbed the potential combination “GooBurner.”

We’ll be sure to post an update if either company weighs in on the issue.