FeedBurner is a great app and a complete category killer in the feed management space. By offering subscriber stats for feeds, they nailed an existing, widespread need. They took that further by offering a number of additional features to optimize feed display and distribution.
If you’re offering feeds as a primary method of content distribution, FeedBurner is a no-look, must-have service.
So, here’s what I don’t like about FeedBurner: at the time I burned my feed and added it to charisma, it was in the form of a FeedBurner url. So, now if I ever break up with FB, I need to notify my subscribers, ask each of them to update their subscription url, and watch my massive readership shrink.
Update: Superstar blogger, Deane Barker, points out in the comments that anyone with a pro account and the ability to set up an alias can get around this pretty easily. (Thanks for rubbing it in.)
For everyone else, it’s Hotel California time… You can check in any time, but you can never leave.
Most FB users will not take the time / know how to alias a feed url that they control. FB knows this. And when Dick Costolo, FB CEO, logs into his blog as The Wizard and writes of hidden barriers to entry being an entrepreneur’s good friend, what I think he really means is that building your own Hotel California is the best way to own a category. Because, while there’s no such thing as a barrier to entry preventing would-be competitors from giving chase, there is such a thing as golden handcuffs that can disuade your users from cancelling.
This isn’t a new discovery and, really, not even something I’m concerned with. But if the completely unconfirmed rumors turn out, and Google acquires FeedBurner, I wonder if that becomes an unfair competitive advantage rather than a hidden barrier to entry.
2 Responses to “Competitive advantage”
If you subscribe, you can alias your own domain. Gadgetopia’s feed is at –
http://rss.gadgetopia.com/gadgetopia
– which points to FeedBurner. If I ever leave FeedBurner, I’ll just point that subdomain somewhere else.
I think we pay them $8 a month for this (and some other extra features). I would never have considered doing it unless we controlled the URL.
You’re right Deane. We’ve aliased feeds more recently and we even typically set them up as pro accounts by default, but when I burned the charisma feed I hadn’t even thought about it quite honestly. So now anything I do by way of change splits up subscribers. Thanks for rubbing that in, though – I need to update the post.