February 29, 2008
On the Finding of Help and the Getting of Answers
As we recently posted, FeedBurner's integration into Google is moving along. We've got our coding hats on and are hard at work to get the essential product pieces where they need to be.
However, one somewhat-below-the-radar part of FeedBurner's integration that is already showing up as part of google.com is our new Help Center. (Well, "new" as of late 2007. We admit to being a touch slow on the draw with the PR on this one.) We point this out to show that migrating to a Googley-er tomorrow isn't strictly tied to FeedBurner charts 'n graphs 'n numbers. It used be difficult to find answers; a popup window here, a Forums post there, a blog post over yonder. The Help Center brings sorely needed structure (and searchability) to a bunch of resources that were largely scattered about before. You can now find topics like "What is a Subscriber? How does FeedBurner tally them?", and "Is there a feed file size limit?" in just one place. (We've still got nothing for you on "How can I avoid jury duty selection?") The Help Center will soon introduce new troubleshooting topics and contact options as well.
Speaking of the Forums: they are overdue for the Google treatment, too. We've provided them since shortly after FeedBurner launched as an essential, community-powered companion to the service itself. In the next few weeks, the Forums will move to a new Google Group, with the following benefits:
- Much less spam
- Improved [BUY CH3AP STUFF ONL1NE] search for old topics and conversations
- New email notification options when new topics are posted
- Much, much [FREE V!AGRA NOW] less spam
We also want to point out that FeedBurner Japan is also going to benefit from these Help Center and Groups changes, too. But what about the many other languages FeedBurner publishers use? Google strongly believes in making products accessible to the widest global audience; efforts to formally localize FeedBurner for the most popular and requested languages are under way, going well beyond the options we currently offer.
And, finally: Leap Year post!
Comments
Great! I'm looking forward to the Google integration with the FeedBurner API. It will be fun to use the subscribers API to create mashups and widgets.
Good to hear! Looking forward to using my Google Groups account for another service. I like the spam jokes, too. :D
What happens to the old forums? Will we still be able to get at our old accounts and change them, or will everything in the whole database be locked? I'm planning on changing domain names soon for my website, so this is something of an issue.
No!!!!
I detest Google Groups. The support forum is one of the best things about Feedburner.
Please don't try to pretend that moving to Google Groups is a positive thing. It really is a huge step backwards.
You may want to check that nobody is spamming your blog somehow...
# Improved [BUY CH3AP STUFF ONL1NE] search for old topics and conversations
# New email notification options when new topics are posted
# Much, much [FREE V!AGRA NOW] less spam
@David: ;-)
Not Google Groups!
Those are some spam infested nook of the internet I rarely visit.
Great. Love this service.
One thing, however, that I couldn't find in help. Has the way feeds are caught changed in the past few weeks. I had feed counts that were slowly climbing over time, up to about 450, but over the past two weeks they have been dropping towards 400.
At the same time, traffic on the site has increased--doubled, in fact--in terms of page views. This could simply reflect a change in the way subscribers are accessing the blog, but that would counter all previous trends (usually new subscribers increase when new visitors start coming).
I wondered if feed catching has changed.
Thanks,
Chris
Very interesting. It's nice to have you guys talking again here.
T
you are the feed masters...
when will google groups give me a full feed?
current Group feeds just make the whole product uninteresting for me, and I hate when someone else decides to move their forum there
nice to hear from you guys after such a long time! Integration with Google is something I'm really looking forward to.
And moving forums into google groups is a really nice move. Let's hope it does cut down the irritating spam
Pre-acquisition, FeedBurner provided GREAT support. Since the acquisition, there has been zero support and what's less than zero? Google Groups.
@Alanna: Thank you for the comment. We understand your reservations about Groups (we've heard it before), but we need to use the home team's technology where possible, and Groups fits the bill for providing community-powered support. And you know what? If we find out there are ways that Groups doesn't support our community and can work with the Groups team on product improvements, we'll do just that. Cooperation between product groups to provide mutual support and feature suggestions is something we encourage around here.
As for support effort: we've heard you on this point and changes in the next few weeks should improve your access to the resources you need to solve problems, get that feed burned and worked into fighting shape.
