Monday, September 2, 2013

FeedBurner FeedBlitz FeedBurner

After a two-day dalliance with FeedBlitz, I am again using FeedBurner to feed the Orange Crate Art feed to feed readers. Why? I found that FeedBlitz returns the same up-and-down stats as FeedBurner. FeedBlitz is not to blame: the source of the problem is the flickering ghost of Google Reader. But I can’t see paying a monthly fee when I can get flaky numbers for free.

If you want to read Orange Crate Art in a reader, subscribe via FeedBurner. That’s the link.

comments: 5

Jim and Lu K said...

Happy Birthday!(which has nothing to do with FeedBurner, but I knew you'd see the message. I'm late (of course).

Michael Leddy said...

Thanks, guys.

Unknown said...

Hi Michael:

Thanks for trying out FeedBlitz. Sorry it didn't work out when you tried us, but I think a couple of points merit being made.

Firstly, you were interacting with our tech suppport team on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday of *Labor Day weekend* to try to help you get the feed redirection properly working. In the middle of the case you decided to switch back.

Tech support, Labor Day weekend. Worth mentioning.

Secondly, as the Migration Guide says, it takes at least a day for the metriics to stabilize. But you hadn't got the moving parts working correctly, so FeedBlitz wasn't seeing all your traffic, plus it was a holiday weekend, so *of course* the traffic is going to be more volatile than usual, even if we were seeing all of it. Finally, you didn't wait a series of complete whole days to see actually how different the variability was as reported by the two different services, which is what you'd really need ot do to be able to draw a conclusion.

Put another way, without seeing all your traffic over several normal days, it isn't possible to judge the relative capabilities of either.

While I hear what you're saying, but I don't think you gave us a fair crack of the whip!

So: Here's an offer for you :)

Start a trial again, let us get your traffic properly and completely redirected so we can count it, and let's see what we see after a few days about the relative volatility of the numbers. Moreover, I'll happily waive your first payment once the trial expires (FeedBlitz will give you a shorter one secondm time around). I think that's a fair deal, don't you?

Best,

Phil Hollows
CEO
FeedBlitz.com
@phollows

Michael Leddy said...

That’s indeed a generous offer, Phil.

I followed the migration directions exactly. What wasn’t working was the FeedBurner Check, not the redirect of the original feed. What I did see were virtually the same numbers I’ve been seeing for at least a month from FeedBurner: up (way up) one day, down (way down) the next. That’s due to Google Reader’s ghostly presence, I take it. My interest in FeedBlitz was to avoid that very problem. So for now I’ll stick with FeedBurner. But maybe I’ll be back. :)

Michael Leddy said...

P. S.: I cast no aspersions on support. I know it was the Labor Day weekend. (Though once got help from Mozy on New Year’s Eve.) The problem I encountered — the fluctuations I see with FeedBurner, virtually the same fluctuations — seems beyond anyone’s fixing (except perhaps Google’s).