Why We're Desperately Awaiting Feedsqueezer
When the RSS management company Feedburner was acquired by the internet goliath Google back in May of 2007, some people were excited, others were concerned. On the one side, there was hope that putting Google's weight behind the struggling service would improve the speed with which feeds were updated. Plus, there would be the option to put AdSense in feeds, which pleased some publishers. Others, however, felt that that the move gave Google too much power over the syndication marketplace.
One of the people concerned was Dave Winer, one of the world's first bloggers and an RSS pioneer. At the beginning of this month, he posted a link to Feedsqueezer, a Feeburner competitor that may end up being the only viable option we'll have when it comes to feed management. Though he didn't provide any context for the link, we found it interesting as well.
Feed Management: The Internet Monopoly
Surprisingly, feed management is one service where there aren't a million different options available. Unlike Web 2.0 sites like Twitter and Friendfeed, whose competitors are plentiful and varied, FeedBurner stands alone. Years ago there was Feedpass, but it never got off the ground. These days, as Allen Stern just noted on CenterNetworks, the only other viable option is Pheedo, a service that offers basically the same services as FeedBurner, but also seems to come with the same set of issues: feeds don't update too quickly, much less in real-time.
Obviously, this lack of true competition is a giant, gaping hole that everyone is waiting for someone to fill. That's why we have our eyes pinned on Feedsqueezer service, hoping that something will come of it.
Feedsqueezer, the Upcoming Alternative to FB
Today, the Feedsqueezer homepage is nothing more than a promise of what's to come: a feed management platform that delivers analytics, SEO, feed re-distribution, content delivery, and more. There's a quiet Twitter account and an unused GetSatisfaction page set up for the service. The one employee representing the service there is "gadgetboy," aka John Federico, a marketing and business development representative whose prior experience includes serving as VP of Marketing for BlogTalkRadio, Senior Strategist for IconNicholson, Sr. Director of podcasting for Audible, Inc., and more.
The only clue we have to Feedsqueezer's progress is yesterday's one (and only) tweet that announces "getting schooled in all things EC2," a reference to Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" service where it appears Feedsqueezer will be hosted.
At least a day old tweet appears to be progress. Now, more than ever, publishers need a real alternative to Feedburner. Anyone interested in signing up for the beta can do so from the Feedsqueezer homepage. Who knows? It's worth a shot.
Update: We mistakenly reported that FeedSquuezer was Winer's own project in our initial coverage. Winer is in fact not associated with the service in any way and we apologize for the error in reporting. The confusion resulted from his statement on his blog: "I also volunteer to help get a Feedburner competitor on the air...update:Feedsqueezer."
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I would try it out but would hate to lose peeps if it does not work out. Hasnt it been under dev for a while?
Posted by: Leather ♥ Donut
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January 23, 2009 7:32 AM
Interesting I did not know Dave was behind this. Dave is not exactly known for building massively scalable apps.
Posted by: Leather ♥ Donut
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January 23, 2009 7:36 AM
@LeatherDonut (hilarious name, btw): the first mention I saw was on the blog post at the beginning of the month. How long *has it* been under dev? Do you know? Yesterday, the account tweeted for the first time, which is why I thought it was worth a look.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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January 23, 2009 7:38 AM
Lovely, can't wait to see more of this.
Well, I'm certainly willing to take a look at this. FB is so badly broken, I've all but decided to pull my last site. In the meantime, I'm going to transition my email subscribers to a commercial mail management service and make ready to self-host, if necessary.
Posted by: Chris Baskind
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January 23, 2009 7:41 AM
We need a Feedburner competitor ASAP!
Posted by: Jorge Escobar
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January 23, 2009 7:43 AM
Heh, glad you like it. I am pretty sure I heard about Feedsqueezer at least several months ago. I've seen the page before linked off of I think Techcrunch. Of course I could be completely wrong. =) Ask Winer...
Posted by: Leather ♥ Donut
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January 23, 2009 7:46 AM
@LeatherDonut: I tried, awaiting a response. :) Anyway, I'm curious if you are able to dig up any more links, because a search for it on TC, as you suggested, delivered nada: http://bit.ly/uwhL. I know it was mentioned at the beginning of the month on Dave's blog - maybe you are remembering that? I found very little on Google
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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January 23, 2009 7:52 AM
I'm giving it a whirl. I signed up for the beta. My concern is they will need some sort of a migration plan from feedburner. Open data and or redirection of the feed. I would be concerned about losing followers. The nice thing feedburner did was canonized the url regardless of what platform I use for blogging.
I just heard that feedburner does supply a 301 redirect option (for 30 days). Assuming most feed readers understand this, then moving your feed shouldn't be a problem.
Ofcourse, feedsqueezer should also add a MyBrand alternative for those who use that service from FB.
My bad. The domain was registered on December 17th. At most it has been around for a month.
Posted by: Leather ♥ Donut
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January 23, 2009 7:57 AM
Can't wait for the new service and I hope it works well! Your title says it all, we're desperately waiting for a working alternative to Feedburner. Wishing the people at Feedsqueezer well as they work on this - I vote for a good product, not a very quick release :)
@LeatherDonut: nice sleuthing! now we know for sure - this is new (yay!)
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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January 23, 2009 7:59 AM
I have nothing to do with this service. This is really damaging, what kind of a research do you guys do. This is ridiculous. Please fix this and post a retraction IMMEDIATELY.
Winer or not, I do hope a solid competitor comes. I'm also happy I've used all my own urls for my feeds. Easy moves.
Dave is correct, he's not involved with feedsqueezer (though we would love his feedback) however, he was kind enough to post a link in a blog post a few weeks back.
Sarah, if you plan to update your post, please let me know as I'd be happy to chat. DM me on twitter @gadgetboy
Just to let everyone know, we're working our tails off to deliver a quality service as soon as possible. Stay tuned to @feedsqueezer for updates.
Ooopie, looks like Dave is not behind this, just promoting it via his website. Correcting post sadly :(
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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January 23, 2009 8:18 AM
@Dave and gadgetboy: corrected and apologies
Annnnnnnd, Dave shows up with his usual cheery self.
Posted by: Leather ♥ Donut
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January 23, 2009 8:24 AM
Here's why the confusion. Dave wrote: "Steve called a few minutes ago, and I volunteered to write about this. **I also volunteer to help get a Feedburner competitor on the air**, whether it's a small independent project or something run by Microsoft. **Update: Feedsqueezer.**"
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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January 23, 2009 8:35 AM
So that means it *will* do atom feeds as well ;)
Posted by: Andrew Smith
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January 23, 2009 8:43 AM
And what makes anyone think that another 3rd Party service will solve these FeedBurner issues? Seriously. There will still be performance issues. There will still be outages. And there's always the possibility that the service gets sold and you end up in the same situation as FeedBurner users are now.
The major blog platforms do RSS pretty well. I use WordPress a lot and I can replicate the three most useful FeedBurner features (iTunes tag support, Subscriber #'s and Email subscription) with three very simple WordPress modules.
Not a complete alternative, perhaps yet, but BlastCasta http://www.blastcasta.com/ has a number of feed tools including the creation of feeds, the transforming of feeds, the widgetizing of feeds, and a powerful feed landing page that let's users combine, filter, sort, and translate feeds as well as the usual subscription options.
Coz u know RSS is the shit and all =)
Posted by: Leather ♥ Donut
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January 23, 2009 9:02 AM
Anyone interested in a more technical, but independent method should look at the Apache Abdera project: http://abdera.apache.org/
Posted by: coldbrew
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January 23, 2009 9:18 AM
YES! Down with FeedBurner!
Posted by: andy brudtkuhl
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January 23, 2009 9:21 AM
Sunday, January 4th:
"I also volunteer to help get a Feedburner competitor on the air, whether it's a small independent project or something run by Microsoft. Update: Feedsqueezer."
Friday, January 23rd:
"I have nothing to do with this service. This is really damaging, what kind of a research do you guys do. This is ridiculous."
Ladies and gentleman, Daaaavve Winer!
Sarah, As I said in Allen's comments, the implementation he had with Pheedo still depended upon Feedburner working properly. We employ several tools to make sure our feeds are updated in real-time including ping API's and a manually ping for those must syndicate NOW stories. We keep a log visible to the account holder when the feeds were updated to keep us in check and in full discloser.
We have a very successful track record up feed updating IF the proper ping services are active with our publishers.
However, we service a different market. Our services cater to large commercial publishers like the NYT, PCWorld, CNET, National Geographic, etc.
Bill Flitter
Founder, Pheedo
I've been using FeedBurner and Feedity (http://feedity.com). Feedity allows me to create RSS feeds from webpages that don't provide an RSS feed, and it also has some basic analytics included..
I have a very simple solution. I use my own RSS feed I don't need some other company providing a enhanced solution. I have never understood why people used feedburner at all.
Getting statistics from a feed is elementary. There are several services out their that provide podcast statistics.
Stupidity in giving someone else control over ones feed is something I will never get. I have no sympathy for those having feedburner issues.
Great post. Let's hope Feedsqueezer takes off as a competitor to Feedburner--but let's also hope Google's critics at least give Feedsqueezer a chance to get off the ground before they insist that "something must be done" (i.e., by government) about Google's Feedburner "monopoly."
Read more here: http://techliberation.com/2009/01/24/feedsqueezer-another-competitor-for-google/
Sarah>>> remember it told there is another living feed management service today i told u about Feedoor which provides more than feed burner with feed merging and filtering.
http://feedoor.com
I can't figure out how to leave a comment on the RWW article, do they close comments after a while (for spam prevention, perhaps) ?
Posted by: Denton Gentry
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May 10, 2009 5:49 AM
It seems like the SUP protocol friendfeed has been pushing would be very useful for an RSS service like this. For sites serving lots of feeds, it would allow the RSS provider to poll for updates a lot more often.
Posted by: Denton Gentry
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May 10, 2009 5:50 AM