Burning Questions - The FeedBurner Weblog

Into the wild: AdSense for feeds

Fri, 30 May 2008 11:12:03 CDT

We've been hinting at this for awhile, but it's finally time to spill the beans: Starting next week, we'll be rolling out AdSense for feeds to a small group of publishers, in anticipation of a full launch to all FeedBurner and AdSense publishers "coming soon". If you start seeing "Ads by Google" on an ad in a feed somewhere, that'd be us.

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.

For publishers who are not yet placing ads in their feeds, any publisher who meets the requirements to join the AdSense program will also be able to use AdSense for feeds. You will be able to manage your feed ad units directly from AdSense Setup tab, and track performance right on the AdSense Report tab. You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content units, or keep them totally separate. You're in control. You can still control the frequency and rules around when ads appear in your feeds, without having to mess with templates on your content management system.

You might be wondering what you'll need to do to use AdSense for feeds. You'll learn more about the details when we fully launch, but here are the basics: you will need to sign up for AdSense if you haven't already, and you will want to set up your AdSense channels for "placement targeting" in order to make sure that advertisers can target your syndicated content specifically. As a publisher, you will remain be in control of the campaigns that are targeted at your feed by harnessing the power of Ad Review Center.

And, this is just the beginning of the chocolaty goodness that will come from ongoing integration effort with Google - there are many more "things" and "stuff" yet to come, as we mentioned a few weeks back.

We'll give you the full details on AdSense for feeds, including supported formats, how to sign up, etc., etc. when we're ready for the full launch to all publishers. In the meantime, FeedBurner feeds will continue to be fed as usual, and we'll be reaching out to select publishers individually to try out AdSense for feeds.

Movin' on up

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:24:06 CDT

There are strange things afoot! (Well, perhaps not "strange," and certainly not just at the Circle K.) In the coming weeks, upon visiting www.feedburner.com, selected publishers will have the opportunity to sign in using their Google Account and experience FeedBurner, now as part of the Google.

If you are among these merry few who migrate early you won't see many changes at first. In fact, you might find yourself saying, "my, it's awfully quiet in here. Almost…too quiet." (But it may look a bit Googlier around the edges.) Your feeds should continue to hum along as they did before, and all of your settings will be yours to manage through your new or existing Google account. This is the same shiny Google account you use to sign into other services at Google.

Following on the footsteps of this account migration, FeedBurner will start to look and feel more like a set of Google services, and we will be completing much tighter integration into other Google services such as Google AdSense. (If you are a feed advertiser, don't worry: we have some happy surprises coming for you as well, and if you are an advertiser who is not yet a feed advertiser, you too shall be blessed with good fortune.)

As part of this Google Account migration, we will need to make a few process changes for our API partners. Effective immediately, the FeedBurner Management API will only be available for existing FeedBurner partners and those Google partners who currently have access to other Google AdSense APIs. The Awareness API will continue to work exactly as it did before, noting that once you migrate to a Google account, you will have to use your Google account credentials IF you use the authenticated API.

If, going forward, you do not want to sign in with a Google account, you can always take your feeds with you by redirecting your subscribers back to your source. Migration will ultimately be here for everybody, including all you MyBrand folks who are master of your domain.

From the Quick Hits Dept.: Transferring Feeds Between Accounts

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:30:00 CDT

Alright, so we're a little behind on announcing this feature as well. It's been live for weeks and is a real time-saver for everyone involved: the new, self-service Feed Transfer capability. As more and more people build blogs and burn feeds, changes in content ownership and control lead to the desire to move a FeedBurner feed from one account to another. In ye goode olde days, someone who wanted to transfer a feed to another account used to a submit a request to us, and then a staffer in our own Central Planning and Command-Line Voodoo department would verify the accounts and then complete the actual feed transfer. Reliable, but time-consuming and tedious for all parties involved.

Away with workaday drudgery! If you own a feed, you may now transfer it to anyone you like simply by using the Transfer Feed… link, which is listed on your feed's details page and is handily pictured below:

Just provide the email address of the person you wish to transfer this feed to and FeedBurner will send them a transfer request email. The recipient clicks a link in the email and then creates or signs into a FeedBurner account and accepts the transfer on-the-spot. The transfer itself will be completed immediately, moving the feed from your account to theirs. (Please note that only feed owners may initiate transfers from their own accounts to others. Additional how-to info about Feed Transfer is in our Help Center topic.)

We hope this update makes the process of moving feeds around much simpler for all of you. Thanks for letting us know just how popular (and necessary) this feature is!

On the Finding of Help and the Getting of Answers

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:49:55 CDT

As we recently posted, FeedBurner's integration into Google is moving along. We've got our coding hats on and are hard at work to get the essential product pieces where they need to be.

However, one somewhat-below-the-radar part of FeedBurner's integration that is already showing up as part of google.com is our new Help Center. (Well, "new" as of late 2007. We admit to being a touch slow on the draw with the PR on this one.) We point this out to show that migrating to a Googley-er tomorrow isn't strictly tied to FeedBurner charts 'n graphs 'n numbers. It used be difficult to find answers; a popup window here, a Forums post there, a blog post over yonder. The Help Center brings sorely needed structure (and searchability) to a bunch of resources that were largely scattered about before. You can now find topics like "What is a Subscriber? How does FeedBurner tally them?", and "Is there a feed file size limit?" in just one place. (We've still got nothing for you on "How can I avoid jury duty selection?") The Help Center will soon introduce new troubleshooting topics and contact options as well.

Speaking of the Forums: they are overdue for the Google treatment, too. We've provided them since shortly after FeedBurner launched as an essential, community-powered companion to the service itself. In the next few weeks, the Forums will move to a new Google Group, with the following benefits:

Much less spam
Improved [BUY CH3AP STUFF ONL1NE] search for old topics and conversations
New email notification options when new topics are posted
Much, much [FREE V!AGRA NOW] less spam

We also want to point out that FeedBurner Japan is also going to benefit from these Help Center and Groups changes, too. But what about the many other languages FeedBurner publishers use? Google strongly believes in making products accessible to the widest global audience; efforts to formally localize FeedBurner for the most popular and requested languages are under way, going well beyond the options we currently offer.

And, finally: Leap Year post!

Hello? Hellooooo?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:37:46 CDT

Hi there. You may be looking in your feed reader every day and thinking "Another no-news-'bout-FeedBurner day." You may be starting to think, "Are they still in there? In the FeedBurner bubble, burning the feeds? Did somebody maybe shut off their connection to the Tubes?" You may be thinking that or worse. We have some good news, and some just newsy news.

First, the good news. We are totally still here, burning the feeds, writing the checks (that's some sweet cursive Giuliana's wielding), and analyzing the analytics.

Next, the newsy news, aka "what we did over summer and winter and spring vacation." If you are looking for juicy announcements, this section is NOT for you. This is more like the academic paper section of the post, except for the fact it lacks erudition and other big vocabulary words. We have been and are busy integrating FeedBurner into a more Googley way of life. This Googley way of life is very different on the backend architecture side, so the team has been busy both scaling and maintaining the existing environment, while simultaneously rewriting the system to act like one of the cool kids in the more Googley (Googly? Can we get a ruling on this one?) architecture world.

So, if you're a publisher, a good next question is "Um, why are you doing this again?" The answers are numerous, so let's itemize a few of them:

Full integration with Google. Integration makes it possible to connect with other Google offerings. For example, only a fraction of our publishers have had the opportunity to participate in the FeedBurner Ad Network to date. We would like to offer this capability to an order of magnitude more publishers, and full integration into Google architecture will make this not just a possibility but a likelihood (more on this in the next couple months).
More and better services. As any Mies Van der Rohe fan will tell you, "more is more." By getting our systems fully integrated into a Google architecture, it will be easier for us to provide some services we've long envisioned but have never really been able to provide because of scale challenges. These include but are not limited to parameterized feeds (e.g., think feeds of query results), a wider variety of email services (those of you wishing to import legitimate-yet-massive email lists know what we mean), and other stuff. And by "stuff," we mean "things."
Easier to scale as load on the system increases. As more feeds are burned and are hit by more kinds of feed reading bots and readers and API's and crawlers, even feeds that don't have new subscribers see increased activity. Full integration into Google will mean an easier time working through performance and scalability bottlenecks, which means the engineering resources now hard at work on scaling can move on to enhancing services.

Why not build new services and integrate at the same time? There are lots of opinions about the best way to go through integrations. Our perspective is that the time you lose trying to continuously merge an updated legacy codebase with a new rewrite causes you be in a world of never actually getting the integration done because you're constantly working on merge problems, which gives you less time to add new features OR get the new backend integration done, and eventually you kind of grind to a halt, much like Achilles trying to catch the Tortoise in Zeno's paradox. We're confident, in fact, that Zeno would have used software integration to illustrate his paradox had he lived in less pre-Socratic times. Anyhoo, we decided to bite the bullet and go full-on integration (while maintaining the existing environment) as much as possible, knowing that it would mean few new features or capabilities while we went on our backend integration journey. So, while we have continued to add hundreds of thousands of new publishers and feeds, you haven't heard a lot from us despite a lot of hard work. It's not really that exciting to post "Soon, you will have everything you used to have, only it will look different to the people working on it here!"

There are lots of lots of product integration points that we know people would like to see, and we are looking forward to those as well. These opportunities are not lost on some of the brighter students at Google, and believe me, there are some real brainiacs around here. We keep whispering to each other in the hallways, "What if they find out we're stupid?"

On the customer side, we have been signing up new publishers right and left (or left and right, depending on whether you live in the northern or southern hemisphere), and in fact, our publisher services team is busier than ever. We used to announce all of these new publishers, but it's a bit less exciting to announce customers that are already customers of other parts of the company without feeling like the kids in school who are the last ones to do everything. (Simulated conversation. FeedBurner: "Hey, we just burned our millionth feed!" Search: "It's cute how they still get excited about numbers in the millions.")

Saturday Subscriber Count Drop?

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:05:08 CDT

Update II (10-Nov-2007): Hopefully you're seeing Feedfetcher stats again in your subscriber count report for November 9th. Not all feeds may have their numbers back yet, but all should be restored starting with today's numbers, which will be summarized tomorrow morning, 11-Nov, CST.

Update (9-Nov-2007): We are aware that Google Feedfetcher has not reported subscribers for most FeedBurner feeds for the November 8th reporting cycle as well. FeedBurner is in direct contact with the Feedfetcher team and while we know the issue isn't yet resolved, we will post another update to this once we have an answer. Also, just to confirm, there is nothing about your FeedBurner account or feed settings that you should change at this time. Hang in there; we're on the case!

If you saw your subscriber count drop precipitously in your Saturday, November 3rd summary from FeedBurner, the reason is that specific subscriber stats from Google Feedfetcher were offline because this service was apparently out late with friends on Friday night, and well, it completely slept through Saturday. It appears to have rallied, however, and amid firm declarations of "I'm never doing that again", Feedfetcher has started diligently reporting subscriber numbers to us, early this morning Pacific Time. FeedBurner publishers' subscriber counts should be closer to what you'd normally expect starting with reports that will be available on Monday morning.

AdSense Integrated with FeedBurner Site Ads

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:00:00 CDT

There's really nothing spookier than hollow, empty ad spaces rattling around your blog and/or web site, putting no cash in your pocket nor any extra hob- in your goblin. Before you banish these underperforming idlers to some distant house upon a lonely hill, we recommend redeeming them with a chance to boost your earning potential. This Halloween, the FeedBurner development team is asking those of us who do the announcing around here to make note of the now-available integration of FeedBurner site ads and AdSense.

This newly integrated capability — designed just for FeedBurner-powered content like yours — puts relevant AdSense content ads to work on your blog and/or website. (Note: AdSense options for feeds not available at this time.) If you choose to activate this service, you can run a 300x250 or 468x60 text or image AdSense ad on your blog. The ad will appear below the first item on your site and archive pages once you have installed the necessary code. Ad content is automatically targeted to complement your site and you will earn revenue each time visitors click on ads. You can even customize the colors (or use a saved color palette from your AdSense account) so the ad unit fits your site's look and feel. Check out these 300x250 examples below.

You don't have to be part of FeedBurner's ad network to put these ads on your site, but be sure to review Google's policies for participating to make sure your site's content is eligible, as these ads are subject to AdSense terms and conditions. Once you're signed up for AdSense, you can check out all the other ways you can monetize your site with ads near your non-feed-powered content. If you are currently part of the FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN), and you've configured your site to run ads, AdSense ads will be inserted on your web site only when there are no FeedBurner Ad Network ads available for those placements (if you choose).

Get Started
To activate the service, sign in to your FeedBurner account, select your feed and go to the Monetize tab where you can connect this service to your AdSense account (if you already have one), or create a new AdSense account (if you don't). This service is currently available to members of FAN and all manner of FeedBurner publishers who go >bump< in the night, but haven't yet joined FAN. (Note: If you have enabled FeedFlare for your site, you've already added the magic code that makes these ads go where they need to go, so connect your account to AdSense on the Monetize tab and you're ready to earn!)

Earning additional revenue doesn't scare me, I t-tell you what. Where can I learn more?
Additional FAQs have been asked and answered over by here.

Happy HallowEARN feed publishers!

Google Reader Subcription Stats and FeedBurner

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:07:38 CDT

Earlier today, the Google Reader team described the new subscriber stats feature now available in Reader's search results. We'll go grab a donut while you take a moment to read the thorough post.

As the Reader team discusses at the bottom of their post, it's important to remember that FeedBurner is aggregating your Google Reader (and Newsgator and Bloglines and...) statistics across all feeds that you may be redirecting through FeedBurner either via your own http configuration wizardliness or through plugins like FeedSmith or maybe even through simple and direct integrations like those in Typepad and Blogger.

We've consolidated subscriber stats from most of the far corners of the feed subscription universe (yes, we are going on record and saying the universe has corners and is a simple geometric shape - we are not yet committing to whether it's 3D/4D/5D, but we are saying it has corners), in order to give you the most complete picture of your audience. There are thousands of feed-reading services with even more services jumping into the distributed media hottub every day (yes, we are going on record as saying it's a hottub, not an ecosystem), so checking your detailed subscriber analytics page within FeedBurner is always a good place to find out where there are new services that are incorporated into your statistics.

Please pay special attention to the information that may be revealed in the new Google Reader subscriber stats as it may point out instances where you have inadvertently fragmented your audience by offering more than one flavor of your feed to the public. No worries, as this is easily remedied. Again, you can redirect any outliers to your FeedBurner feed and instructions for Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress are available.

Video a GoGo

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:00:00 CDT

Can you imagine adding fun, targeted video content to your site, while earning revenue at the same time? No, really. Picture the majesty, the drama, the undeniable spectacle of it all. Video. Your site. Total togetherness. It's a dreamlike state.

Whoa, snap out of it! This video-makes-money-on-your-site thing is now a solid reality. Google AdSense announced today a new offering called video units. Video units let website publishers choose relevant content from select YouTube partners and have it streamed to their sites within a highly customizable video player. The videos are supported with user-friendly, targeted advertising, both above the video content and within the bottom 20% of the viewing area. Video units are now available in the U.S. for English language websites that are signed up for an AdSense account.

If you want to learn more and see a sample video unit, you can check out the AdSense blog. If you're ready to get started, sign in to your AdSense account. You'll need to sign up for AdSense to take advantage of this new service.

Happy viewing!

This post has been brought to you by Ryan Hayward, aspiring blogger and Product Marketing Manager for Google AdSense.

The FeedSmith Plugin: newly fortified as part of this delicious breakfast

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:41:57 CDT

This post is a quick note from the foreman down at the FeedBurner ironworks and custom tools depot. If you're a new or longtime user of FeedBurner FeedSmith — our plugin for WordPress that helps ensure you count all of your blog's feed traffic through FeedBurner — there is a recommended security-related update to this plugin for you to download. Here are the details:

Potential security vulnerability
Some WordPress plugins that permit the entry of user-entered values, such as older versions of FeedSmith, can be vulnerable to what is called a "cross-site request forgery." Without getting overly technical, this permits someone to change WordPress plugin settings on your system without you noticing during the time you are signed into your WordPress control panel. And no one wants that.

How to protect your feed
Protect your feed by downloading FeedSmith v2.3, available; download it now. This newest release ensures that the only person who may change FeedSmith settings is the administrative account that is signed into your WordPress control panel. If you are following our WordPress QuickStart guide to get started with FeedBurner, the link to download FeedSmith provided in that QuickStart has already been updated to point to v2.3. To verify the version of the plugin you have, you can visit the "Plugins" tab within the WordPress control panel and look for FeedSmith's entry; the version number is displayed in that entry.

If you currently use FeedSmith on your WordPress-powered site, follow these instructions to update this plugin.

Download version 2.3 of the plugin.
Sign in to your WordPress admin control panel.
Under Plugins, locate the current FeedSmith plugin, and click "Deactivate."
Copy the plugin file, FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php into your default WordPress plugin directory, wp-content/plugins/
Reactivate the plugin by logging in to your WordPress administration area, clicking Plugins, then clicking Activate at the end of the "FeedBurner FeedSmith" row.

At the end of this process, v2.3 will be active and will use your existing feed redirection settings; there is no need to re-enter them. You will also be protected against any potential request forgery attack.

We'd like to thank Blog Security for their recent writeup of this potential exploit. Software is fun!

Pubvertise Your Live Content to a Wider Audience

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:15:00 CDT

They laughed at us in Geneva when we presented our new word to the scientific community, but it's the surest way to describe our latest enhancement to Headline Animator. Publish + Advertise, all in one place (and let's not kid ourselves, "adverblish" isn't going anywhere).

Headline Animator - through its many transformations - is morphing into quite the marketing tool. Why do we continue to call it a Headline Animator when others refer to these things as widgets? Because we are a stubborn people, some would say an ornery people, raised on the hardscrabble plains east of Medicine Hat, eking out meals of corn with more corn, and we say it's a Headline Animator…where were we? Oh yes. For those of you tracking the Headline Animator's evolution via ham radio or this blog, you already know that it helps build your audience by enabling feed promotion on MySpace, other blogs, in forums, even at the bottom of your emails. Or, you can just grab code and put it wherever you think it should go. Leveraging Headline Animator to advertise your content in other feeds is the next step.

How it works
By connecting the simple-to-use Headline Animator service to our world-class feed advertising network we can give content publishers the ability to create their very own dynamic, feed-powered ad units and place them in the feed ad network (all by themselves). No sales folks, no ad trafficking to ensure the creative is current. No speed bumps. Just you and your content, going more places. This is the fast-track method for putting dynamic content in front of an audience subscribed to the most popular feeds on the series of tubes. If the world's top blue-chip advertisers can advertise in feeds, why not you too?

Sample ads
Feed-powered ads reflect the most current headlines from your feed and they can be designed to suit your marketing needs. Create an ad encouraging feed subscription using one of our standard template designs. Or, paint your own canvas by linking to a background image you host. Check out these sample ads below:

Quality and reach of the ad network
Rarely has the almighty dollar gone so far. Place your ad in a target channel (e.g. Business, Arts & Entertainment, Travel) and it will run on established brand sites like the leading newspapers and media properties (e.g. USA Today, Wired, Newsweek), top blog networks (e.g. Gawker Media, B5 Media, Gothamist LLC) and independent sites across a diverse range of topics. This type of ad buy gives you scale and access to an audience consuming content away from traditional Web sites.

Getting Started
The process for creating and placing a Headline Animator ad is simple. Sign in to your FeedBurner account, select the feed you want to promote, navigate to the "Publicize" tab and look for the Headline Animator service listed in the left-hand column. From there, you can create your ad. (View a sample configuration screen) For more information, additional FAQs are included at the end of this post. If you publish regularly updated content and you want to put that content in front of more eyeballs, this service is for you.

Follow the story link to read more...

Flame-Bearing Swag Still Available

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:49:22 CDT

We've recently moved into Google's fabulicious Chicago office and brought with us our remaining stock of FeedBurner stickers and buttons. If you are interested in procuring these free delights, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope (or international reply coupon) to our new mailing address. This offer is good until we run out of stickers and/or buttons.

Google
c/o I Want A FeedBurner Sticker!
20 West Kinzie Street
9th floor
Chicago, IL 60610
USA

Here are a few answers to some lingering questions from the original thread:

Can you ship my swag overseas?
We'll send your sticker to the moon if the postage is correct. But to answer the question, yes. We are able to send stickers overseas and can report several successful exchanges from Italy, Malaysia and Japan. Not a peep yet from Reykjavik, but we're cautiously optimistic.

Why don't you save yourselves the hassle and put this stuff on one of those fancy web-based swag fulfillment sites?
What can we say, we're control freaks when it comes to delivering the goods. Besides, we like receiving your cards and letters and save them for posterity. Offline marketing continueth!

What's the postage for [insert your country here]?
Unfortunately, we don't scale well, so you're going to have to figure this one out on your own. A few helpful commenters suggested stamps.com as a resource for calculating U.S. postage. You can also use this postage rate calculator. The weight of an average FeedBurner sticker package is approximately 0.3 oz, based on a standard-sized envelope. The number of FeedBurner stickers that can fit on the head of a pin is still hotly debated.

Why is this a limited offer?
Supplies are, sadly, limited. Should the public start demanding embroidered beanies or highball cozies en masse, we'll talk again.

Keep those flames a burnin'!

FeedBurner Integration for Blogspot Blogs

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:00:00 CDT

Hot on the heels of last week's much-ballyhooed free FeedBurner for everyone, 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. Starting right now, you just log into your Blogger account, select Settings | Site Feed, enter your FeedBurner feed address and click "Save Settings." Zap! Pow! Kraaakkkk! Now you've got the complete picture of how your content is being consumed out here, out there, out everywhere.

Why is redirecting so important?
We're glad you asked. By redirecting your feed, you can get a true picture of how many subscribers you have. Some of you might even see a few more subscribers magically appear, though results will most certainly vary. Why so? Sometimes, publishers inadvertently fragment their feed audience by offering more than one feed address on the blog itself or within their autodiscovery tags (the method by which feed readers automatically detect the address of your feed for syndication purposes). This results in some subscribers not being counted, and no one wants that in a world where everyone should count for something. By redirecting your feed, you can consolidate any straggler subscribers and greatly improve your ability to effectively measure your audience.

Getting started
Our Blogger QuickStart guide has been updated to include all the necessary info for redirecting your feed. And, since you've made it this far in today's post, now is a good time to let you know we're still accepting Publisher Buzz submissions, so if you have a good story to tell about your newly integrated Blogger feed or your experience using our feed-related services, submit it to buzz@feedburner.com.

Blog on, good peoples.

FreeBurner for Everyone

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 10:00:00 CDT

One of the many benefits that FeedBurner publishers will enjoy now that FeedBurner is part of the Google family is a little something we like to call, "more for free!" Beginning today, two of FeedBurner's previously for-pay services, TotalStats and MyBrand, will be free. Not in the sense of soaring high above the clouds or recently sprung from the hoosegow, but free like you'll no longer gladly be billed on Tuesday for a burned feed today. We suspect this will be welcome news to the 450,000+ of you using many of our other free services, but understanding that your feed is your feed, you will need to activate these newly freed-up services in order to partake in their awesomeness.

FeedBurner Stats PRO
PRO is feed analytics taken to the next level. You will now have access to the number of people who have viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and “Reach,” which estimates the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content. You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the "Item Views" checkbox to activate these PRO features.

MyBrand
The MyBrand service (also PRO-level) is located under the "My Account" tab after you've signed in. MyBrand lets you maintain consistency between your feed address and your hosted website's domain, if matchy-matchy is your thing. For example, rather than using feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeedName, your MyBrand-ed feed address can be feeds.myexcellentdomain.net/MyFeedName. To get started with MyBrand, sign into FeedBurner, click the "My Account" link in the upper left-hand corner, and then click "MyBrand". Nota Bene: You must be comfortable playing around with DNS entries and own the rights to the domain whose DNS entries you'll be playing around with in order to successfully activate MyBrand.

Previous "PRO" customers will not be charged for the month of June 2007 and beyond. Also, after newly activating either of these features or services, you'll notice a nifty new "PRO" badge next to your feed(s) on My Feeds page.

Welcome to FreeBurner!

It's True-gle!

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:55:00 CDT

Unlike the rumor that FeedBurner is nearly code-complete on a multiplayer Wii edition, the blog posts, phone calls and conjecture about our future as part of the Google family tree are now officially true.

FeedBurner has been acquired by Google. The local weather forecast calls for general euphoria with intermittent periods of off-the-rails delight.

This is one of those posts in which there's so much to say that it's difficult to know where to begin. We want to start off by highlighting the whys, wherefores, and whatnots for our publishers. FeedBurner has always been a publisher-centric company. We built the company around a central theme and hypothesis that distributed media present publishers with immense opportunities as well as spiraling complexity.

The vision is straightforward: publishers who successfully promote distribution and measure consumption will be in a position to derive more value (aka make more money, gain more influence, etc.) from media distribution. Feeds present a simple and ubiquitous opportunity for publishers to embrace distributed media, but content distribution standards without metrics, publicity tools, and monetization engines are ultimately of little value to individuals and organizations whose businesses depend on an ability to maximize and measure reach.

There is so much alignment between how we think about publisher services and how Google has executed around publisher services, that we'll try to pick just a few specific areas that we believe are the most compelling reasons for working together:

Google's competencies and focus around publisher analytics, distribution, and monetization map perfectly to our suite of services.
Publishers want a single dashboard and single source for the metrics that give them feedback about the value of their content and its impact on their business. By combining our market leading feed metrics with Google's market leading site and marketing analytics, publishers now get a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their audience. This 'total perspective' has long been a goal of ours, and we think our combined analytics offering is going to provide publishers with previously undiscovered insights and opportunities.
The measurement of awareness advertising is evolving from unique impressions to audience engagement. By providing our hundreds of thousands of publishers with Google's world-class advertising marketplace and metrics, we can provide far more value to publishers and begin to deliver this next step in ROI measurement to advertisers.
Speed of innovation. We have always prided ourselves in our ability to deliver extensive functionality to the market rapidly. As we have grown to hundreds of thousands of publishers with global demands, we are delighted to be combining forces with an organization that has a deep understanding of the most efficient ways in which to deploy significant functionality to the widest possible audience. It is one thing to roll out a capability to 3 percent of your customers and it's something else entirely to roll out a broad set of new services simultaneously to customers around the globe.

Back when we released the now oh-so-popular FeedCount chicklet in 2005, FeedBurner co-founder Matt Shobe said in a blog post here that "This is how it all starts. First, a little counter with digits whizzing past…next thing you know it's all bubble cars and floating cities as far as the eye can see." We still smile at that line, mostly because it's funny, but also because it's so easy to get ahead of ourselves and extrapolate from the abstract "these synergies make sense" to "enormous benefits will accrue to all interested parties." The fact is that there is an immense amount of work to do in order to a) continue to provide our customers with the best feed analytics, b) begin to provide a more comprehensive 360-degree view of audience and reach, and c) enable publishers to most efficiently determine the best ways to distribute and monetize their content.

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!"

We suspect several of you may have questions, we can see your hands waving out there, and fortunately, some of these questions are answered in this FAQ. Also, you can and should contact us with any additional questions. All of your favorite FeedBurning services will remain totally accessible during the integration.

Back to it.