Disqus - Friends of CorinneCR

Re: Feedblitz: An Accidental Spam Blogger

phollows — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:24:59 -0000

Hi Jonathan:

Thanks to your making us aware of the problem FeedBlitz has added a "NOINDEX" option to the settings. It's available during initial configuration, and may be applied to existing newsletters by going to the Newsletter Center at FeedBlitz, clicking "Newsletter Settings", moving to the next screeen and checking the NOINDEX box on.

Thanks again for the heads-up,

Phil

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

phollows — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:30:54 -0000

Fred, I don't get your RSS objection. Dedicated readers are a pain, but if the "linkroll" were stored in RSS doesn't mean you (or your visitors) would have to read it in an aggregator.

I think of RSS as a normalized message format. There are plenty of widgets and add-ins that convert feeds into something for web sites, for email (e.g. FeedBlitz at over 2.5 million messages / day), IM, Tweets etc. Is it RSS you really obejct to or just aggregators as RSS client?

Re: The Blogroll I Want For AVC

phollows — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:11:16 -0000

What are the folks at Xobni up to? Sounds like 'Xobni for browsers' is what you want. Sort by activity / time, use some combination of hard and heuristic thrsholds to filter out drive-bys and I think that's it.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/03/feedblitz-launches-feedburner.html

phollows — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:00:33 -0000

Hi All: We're dogfooding like crazy and are migrating over to a fully FeedBurner-free existence ... http://feedblitz.blogspot.c...

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/04/as-feedburner-flails-and-fails.html

phollows — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:47:32 -0000

I agree with Steve in that an RSS service can only report what the aggregators tell it. The thing is, though, looking at the FeedBlitz RSS service logs from last week, the only days (US Eastern) when Google Reader completely failed to report its readership was April 2nd and March 30th. We have numbers for all the other days. So counts reported by anyone on April 3rd and March 31st would have been off. It seems to me that the problems have been much more pervasive than that.

Steve's response here doesn't address the significant delays in updating that the community has seen (which started months ago and was one of the data points that informed our decision to push to build an alternative), and the overall neglect and decay of FeedBurner since Google bought them. Nothing material has happened to FeedBurner's feature set in the last 2 years. Performance and customer service have visibly declined. There's no transparency or responsiveness to problems. Google even managed to rip out the sense of humor you guys had.

Steve, people aren't unhappy and changing to us simply because of a metrics glitch. This problem and Google's inability (or unwillingness) to publicly respond and deal with it has become the visible, public straw that's going to break this camel's back. Dealing with FeedBurner (and the other Google units) as standalone entities in isolation is not working. Dealing with this problem in isolation has not worked in the past and is not working now.

There's no evidence anywhere that Google cares about FeedBurner, its former employees or, most importantly, the publishers and subscribers FeedBurner serves.

It's a tragedy. I'm sorry it's happened to you.

Meanwhile, we at FeedBlitz are more than picking up where you left off. http://www.feedblitz.com/f/...

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/04/as-feedburner-flails-and-fails.html

phollows — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:41:26 -0000

Duncan: I tihnk the best way (in the future) to protect against lock in like this is to have the feeds belong to your domain via a CNAME or redirect and then tie us in under that. Of course that really doesn't help you now in terms of getting out from FeedBurner, but before anyone switches I strongly recommend aliasing the feed to feed.yourdomain.com to eliminate future risk.

Re: Google Screws Up My WordPres Ping List

phollows — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:15:50 -0000

Hi Andy:

That ping is a ping sink; we don't currently repeat the ping out.

But we could.

We've a couple of things in the queue at the moment but drop me a note on this and anything else that would help you make the decision to switch.

Phil

Re: Don't Forget About Email

phollows — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:16:17 -0000

@daryn - tweet me @phollows and let's talk. I'm the FeedBlitz founder and we offer RSS to mail, Twitter, IM and RSS services as well for those looking for a FeedBurner alternative for feed management.

Re: 5 Tips for Getting More From Your Blog

phollows — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:43:08 -0000

Don't forget to boost circulation by adding alternate subscription options such as email via FeedBlitz or FeedBurner.

Re: How To Optimize Your RSS And Email Subscriptions On Your Blog (day 8)

phollows — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:55:52 -0000

Hi John:

Interesting prespective. More insight on email and RSS subscriptions over here: http://blog.hubspot.com/blo...

Re: Adding CommentLuv Plugin And How To Tweak Feedburner For Better Backlinks

phollows — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:15:54 -0000

FeedBlitz has a solution that gives you best backlinks from CommentLuv AND full RSS item tracking:

http://blog.feedblitz.com/2...

Thanks

Phil

Re: Google Company Files Patent on Promotional Tweets & Facebook Messages

phollows — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:50:41 -0000

Surely there's plenty of prior art to sink this one.

Re: Social Networking vs Email

phollows — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:32:26 -0000

To your point I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison. Email is simply messaging, and (for better or worse) has basically remained so, whereas social networking is so much more than that. I'd expect people to spend more time in richer environments than simply messaging. And, speaking as an social-networked email service provider, that's OK. The more people consume social networks and feeds the better we do.

Re: Social Networking vs Email

phollows — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 07:33:45 -0000

When the chart left says "users" does it mean "people" or"accounts", I wonder.

Re: Social Networking vs Email

phollows — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:27:39 -0000

Satish Mummareddy and BerislavLopac said what I was going to - Email converged to portals (which largely failed to jump to social networks) and email is a protocol, not an app. It is the email clients that didn't evolve, not email as such. Email protocols have to evolve carefully for interoperability's sake. I find myself wondering about today's social networks and how the walls are around them. APIs are gates into the garden, but they're still walled gardens nonetheless.

Re: Is there an alternative to FeedBurner?

phollows — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:51:08 -0000

FYI FeedBlitz offers a supported RSS service (along with email, Twitter, Facebook and IM distribution). FeedBlitz has a migration wizard that greatly simplifies migration from FeedBurner to FeedBlitz for your RSS and email subscribers. It's available under FeedBlitz's RSS tab as "FeedBurner Import" in the left side bar.

Re: Twitter Bringing Photos and Videos to the Stream

phollows — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:53:43 -0000

Wish they'd focus on killing the fail whale and API outages for good. The core service needs work and has availability issues every week.

Re: Best practice from email unsubscribes

phollows — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:19:24 -0000

FYI FeedBlitz puts up a very simple unsubscribe survey for all unsubscribes for all our lists. Just pick a reason (too much, too little, not relevant, etc) and it's available in a report and in an email sent to the list owner. We've been doing it for years because there's information and actionable data even when (perhaps epecially when) someone decides to opt out of a list.

Thanks,

Phil Hollows
Founder, FeedBlitz LLC
www.feedblitz.com
blog.feedblitz.com
twitter.com/phollows

Re: Stay N Alive: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS, Completely

phollows — Mon, 09 May 2011 16:47:22 -0000

...which is why email (RSS-powered) is a much better option all round; You know who they ware, there's better branding, tracking, personalization.

I have two thoughts.

One is that Twitter's actions reek security by obscurity. They haven't stopped RSS - my Twitter favorites feed, souped up by FeedBlitz at http://feeds.feedblitz.com/... - is just fine. They've made it impossible for consumers to find. Note that the timing of the post at Twitter was linked to OAuth. you can't authenticate RSS via OAuth. IIRC update feeds used to require authentication. I wonder if they're now all public?

There's a valid argument to be made taht consumers don't understand it, but a wholesale feature regression like this for those of us who do is ... odd.

The argument isn't about what we "read" on Twitter, it's about controlling access to information. You can get access to all sorts of things Twitter wants to control via the API for "free" via the appropriate RSS feed. The added irony of course is that Dick Costolo, Twitter's CEO, was CEO of FeedBurner.

Facebook is the AOL of our era. Closed, capricious and works simply because they're popular. It's a shame to see Twitter heading the same way.

Re: Competition - The Pros and Cons

phollows — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:10:15 -0000

Hi Gina:

Fred has his list set to a daily digest; that's why the schedule is the way it is. If you and others want to lobby for different timing during the day or more immediacy, I suggest comments here are the way to go. We at FeedBlitz can certainly accomodate that if Fred chooses to do so and the community wants it. :)

Best,

Phil Hollows
Founder, FeedBlitz
Author: List Building for Bloggers

Re: Disqussing Disqus

phollows — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:12:43 -0000

Hi Fernando:

FYI FeedBlitz has an "Express" schedule publishers can choose if they want faster delivery (we also have weekly, monthly and manual schedules too, depending on publisher preferences).

Best,

Phil Hollows
Founder and CEO, FeedBlitz
Author: List Building For Bloggers

Re: How to Maintain Visibility with Your Blog Audience [Recommended Reading]

phollows — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:41:02 -0000

Thank you for the mention, Denise!

Re: How to Maintain Visibility with Your Blog Audience [Recommended Reading]

phollows — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:42:21 -0000

OTOH - if there's valuable content that drives people to the funnel, why wouldn't that be on the blog too?

Re: Why Aren’t Email Lists Extinct in the Age of Social Media?

phollows — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:51:47 -0000

Thanks for posting! The link to register for my session is http://blogworld-nyc2011.sc...

Re: Four Power Tips for List Building

phollows — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:18:14 -0000

Hi Alli:

Thanks for posting and attending! Video coming soon :)