WatBlog Newsletter Archive: WATBlog Update "FeedBurner Migrates Accounts to Google Servers - Bloggers Take Note" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Sunday, January 18, 2009

WATBlog Update "FeedBurner Migrates Accounts to Google Servers - Bloggers Take Note" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Here are the WATBlog email updates for watblogna@gmail.com

"FeedBurner Migrates Accounts to Google Servers - Bloggers Take Note" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

FeedBurner Migrates Accounts to Google Servers - Bloggers Take Note

I happened to notice today in my Feedburner account that they are moving my account to Google. Google had acquired Feedburner way back in mid 2007, and had integrated it with Google Adsense last year to finally show signs of a Google product. WATBlog had done an excellent coverage on the topic then including RSS advertising in general and a debate on whether Feedburner will be a monetization success following the integration. You can read the entire post here. It seems Google went live with the moving of accounts option for users yesterday.

In the post, we also discussed how the fact that Feedburner and Google accounts not being linked directly is the only sore point in the whole FAN Google Deal. Google had mentioned then that a completely automated process of migration would soon be in place and it seems the process finally went live yesterday. They had however started a manual migration process initiated through emails. And after the migration the regular http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedname had to be changed to http://feedproxy.google.com/feedname then. The process was stopped anyway after Google was flooded with emails from all over.

Apparently with the new automated process the feed URL has to be changed to http://feeds2.feedburner.com instead. In fact Andreas from Xaviermedia.com has a post on how to migrate and the steps thereafter and also on what’s new with regards to features. Self branded feeds however only need to change their DNS Records while their feed URL remains unnaffected. Also according to Google, while users won’t lose their subscribers in this migration, the reports and other analytics data would take a week to adjust and give the correct numbers.

They also added that “In addition, the algorithms we use to calculate subscribers and reach at Google are more accurate and up to date than the algorithms previously used at FeedBurner.com, so your numbers will not be exactly the same before and after the transfer. We are constantly tuning our analytics to ensure they are accurate and correct for our publishers, but going forward we are only doing this within the Google environment.”

Feedburner users have time till the 28th of February to move their accounts to Google. For further details, one can check this FAQ page on the migration. All in all it is good news for a lot of bloggers who swear by their RSS numbers and monetize their blogs, with a common ground now available for both. However, Google’s near complete monopoly in RSS advertising for blogs does prick my mind, and I hope to see some competition coming in the field. I am blissfully unaware if there are any..Any names?