feedsqueezer - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/feedsqueezer en Copyright 2012 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:45:03 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.35-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Report: Feedburner Is Available 99.94% of the Time feedburner_logo_may09.pngAccording to a new report from website monitoring service Pingdom, Feedburner had an uptime of 99.94% over the last two months. Feedburner, which a lot of publishers use to manage their feeds and get usage statistics, was acquired by Google in 2007, and even though Google has kept the service running, a lot of users have been unhappy with various aspects of the service. With a 99.94% uptime, though, there is good evidence that the core function of the service, making feeds available, stands on solid ground - which, of course, we would expect from a service that runs on Google's servers.

]]> According to Pingdom, most of the outages were very short, with the longest lasting just 13 minutes, and most lasting just around a minute (Pingdom checked its feed once a minute for this report).

Pingdom also reports that the average loading time for the Pingdom feed was about 0.8 seconds, which has gradually improved since March. Overall, this number might be a good indication for the health of the Feedburner service, but for most users, 0.8 seconds will probably mean very little, as it often takes Feedburner 15 minutes or more to even update a feed with a new post.

feedburner_loadtime_may09.png

The Feedburner service has definitely had its fair share of problems, including major issues with the stats it reports, but uptime was never really Feedburner's most pressing problem. On our personal blogs and here at RWW, we have often seen that Feedburner would not respond to pings or took far too long to update our feeds.

While we have seen a few startups in this space, including FeedBlitz and Feedsqueezer, for most bloggers Feedburner is still the de-facto standard for managing their RSS feeds. And while it is nice to see that Google is doing a good job at keeping it up and running, it would be nice to see some general fine-tuning of the service. Even Google is now getting into the real-time web, and RSS feeds, which used to feel like a very speedy and efficient way to subscribe to information, but now are starting to feel rather slow.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_feedburner_uptime_may.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_feedburner_uptime_may.php News Wed, 13 May 2009 08:08:38 -0800 Frederic Lardinois 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.

feedsqueezer.png

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."

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_were_desperately_awaiting.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_were_desperately_awaiting.php Product Reviews Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:08:54 -0800 Sarah Perez