• Gmail – takes me right into my mailbox with no login screen
• Google Checkout – forces me to enter my password each time but displays my username
• Feedburner – takes me directly into the my main list of managed feeds
• Google AdSense – displays a login page but the login box is missing and a “waiting” note and then I am taken directly into my account
• Google AdWords – takes me directly to my management screen
• Google Webmaster – displays a similar screen to Google AdSense but I am forced to click the login button but am never prompted for a password
• iGoogle – takes me directly to my customized home page
• YouTube - clicking upload takes me directly to the upload screen
• Google Reader – takes me directly to my RSS feeds
• Orkut - takes me directly to my account management page
• Google Groups – takes me to my groups management page
• Google Docs – takes me directly to my documents management page
• Google Calendar – takes me directly to my calendar
• Blogger – forces me to login using my Google account information

At first I was thinking that it’s great that Google forces me to enter my password when I want to process orders for my startup in Google Checkout. But if that’s the case, shouldn’t Google AdSense follow the same authentication pattern? What about Google Docs and Calendar – documents in both of those services could be just as sensitive as financial information in Google Checkout/AdSense or AdWords.

Earlier this week we had over 1,500 comments on our Gmail down post. Many of the comments (and in emails I received) noted how many confidential and important documents are held in user’s Gmail accounts.

My question to ya’all and to Google is simple – why not follow the same procedures for all Google services? Or perhaps the better option is to allow users to select what level of authentication they would like for each service. Either way, I’d like to see some consistency based on the “security level” of each application.

With Lijit’s version, they have added some additional functionality. In a blog post Lijit explains, "Lijit will host the main site, aggregate all the RSS feeds from the individual bloggers, and allow your readers to search through the entire network of experts. Additionally, we give you the ability to monetize your network through display and search advertising." You can also grab a widget that highlights the latest content from the network on your site or blog.

So I could take the feeds for RWW, Mash, Drama 2.0, WinExtra, GigaOm and StartupMeme and then slap ads around the combined feed that I profit from while the actual content creators get nothing? I sure hope that isn’t the case otherwise the S word might appear.

I liked the content networks on Feedburner and it looks like the content networks on Lijit will be even more powerful. Check out Louis Gray’s recap from a trip to the Lijit HQ last week.

Steve talks about feed monetization, rss subscriber count accuracy, stats integration with Google Analytics, email tracking, speed of feed updates, feed flare updates, size of FeedBurner team, ad formats and Steve’s feed predictions for 2009.

In the interview Steve notes that most publishers are earning more with the new AdSense for Feeds product. I would strongly disagree both from my own sites and from other publishers I’ve spoken with. When I met with the FB team, they said that their ad team was good at selling tech ads. I would agree with that statement because they had top of the line advertisers paying good rates. Also remember that the FeedBurner ad program was mostly (or exclusively I forget) a CPM model; the AdSense model is CPC which makes a difference in total earnings.

It’s also interesting that Steve notes that the team they have working on FeedBurner come in and out at "various times". As for the pinging and updates, again, I’ve been able to get the CN feed to update instantly with no issues.

I look forward to seeing how Steve and his team can get FeedBurner moving towards progress as both a service and a publisher monetization option in early 2009.

At the basic level, Feedburner provides two services: feed management and advertising injection.

Feed management offers the ability to track your subscribers and insight into how your readers are using your feed. I believe the tracking can be tied into Google Analytics but I haven’t explored this so I can’t comment. There are a variety of “feedflare” items which help you promote your feed via social sites and other services. The feedflare items can live within the feed and/or on the source website. There are other feed management options including: summary feed, geotagging feeds, format converters, etc. In the two years I’ve used FB, I haven’t spent much time investigating these options.

There’s also a feed email management tool which allows readers to receive a daily email of content from a blog. I have found that many of the CN readers like this option. You can also setup a rotating headline animator which seemed to be popular in 2007 but I don’t see many people using it today.

From a monetization perspective, the ad program now runs through Google AdSense. You setup feed ads in your AdSense profile and ads begin to serve in the feed. To be honest, the monetization has been absolutely disappointing especially when compared to the high cpm and top advertisers the FB sales team were able to put in my feed. Some have reported that the ad targeting is also pretty off-base but it appears to be a bit better today.

When it comes to options, there really aren’t many out there. Pheedo is one option that offers basically the exact same services as FB does with a strong support team. Pheedo has a dedicated sales team similar to the old FB sales team and the earnings were much stronger than AdSense for Feeds. My only real issue with Pheedo is that I could never get the feed to update quickly or in near real-time.

What other services are there that could replace what FeedBurner offers? Please leave links in the comments and I will add them to the post. I am also interested in knowing if you serve ads in your feed.

One of the issues with moving your feed from FeedBurner is that it will take some time for the feed address to update if it does update at all. Unlike an email list where you can move providers with no worries because you have control over the list, it’s not exactly the same with a RSS feed. I spoke with a few people over the past month about this and basically what happens is that you “tell” FeedBurner to update your rss to a new address. Then when a reader attempts to retrieve the feed, FeedBurner redirects the feed to the new address. But I hear it doesn’t always work.

For the large bloggers with defaults all over the web and millions of subscribers, the redirect issue could hit them bigtime. Defaults are where a service like Google Reader basically gives x blog a listing so that all new subscribers (or some who pick a package) receive a blog or set of blogs. I am not convinced that non-subscribing defaults will forward to the new address appropriately.

I have to believe that Google values the FeedBurner product because of the content, their Google Reader application and the Google AdSense advertising injection. With all of the public talk over the past days about the issues with FeedBurner, it’s interesting that no statement regarding fixing the issues and what’s coming next for the service has been made. There have also been no updates on the Google Feeds for Adsense blog. But there are plenty of posts on the FB Google Group asking for help.

You can read all of my FeedBurner posts over the past two years.

Let’s fast forward to more recent times. Late last year FeedBurner began to move publishers over to the Google hosting architecture. CN was in the first batch of sites that were moved and our feed url changed to a Google domain. However over the past week or so, the url is back to a feedburner.com domain. We’ve heard reports that Google has been pushing everyone to switch over to the Google hosting architecture this month. Of course Google might have just moved the domain over so I am not too worried about this domain name return.

I’ve also noticed a big drop in the subscriber count listed in the administration panel of my account. Several others have contacted me with the same issue and it’s starting to spread on Twitter. While you know I believe that the overall subscriber counts are just as valid as "hits" were in 1995, the more important issue is that each of our subscribers are receiving the proper feed.

There’s been a lot of chatter lately that FB isn’t updating feeds quick enough. After using Gabe Rivera’s trick, I find my feed always updates instantly. If your RSS numbers are down, please leave a comment. You don’t need to share the numbers, just if there is a drop in the overall count.

Last week Google decided to close a number of services and many wondered if FB was next to close. My hope is actually the opposite. I’d like to see Google invest more time and resources into FB because it’s important to both users and publishers. And both of those groups are important to Google’s advertisers and investors.

Update: LiveCrunch has a similar post from today as well.

I’ve always been loyal to FeedBurner, even capitalizing the B when most don’t. Yet, as I predicted, the move to Google’s ad program has been very disappointing. I can only hope that the program will get better over time. Immediately after Google acquired FeedBurner I was nervous that FeedBurner would ditch their awesome advertising network for Google’s low paying, text ad AdSense program. Sadly I was right.

Here are some of my additional thoughts in video:

Adam Ostrow wonders what type of ad matching Google is doing based on the ads that he has seen in the Mashable feed.

We have been relatively successful in selling our own RSS ads. Perhaps there is room for a new RSS ad player to take the slot that FeedBurner’s ad program occupied. We are testing the Pheedo feed advertising service and I will provide a side-by-side comparison in about a month.

Tonight we were also added to the Google AdSense program for RSS feeds. Setting up ads in the feed is simple – same process as setting up an ad unit in the traditional AdSense program.

The options are:

• Name – the feed name
• Size – this is automatically set by Google
• Ad Type – text, text/image or image only
• Frequency – how often do you want ads to appear – I’ve selected every 3rd item
• Post length – how long of a post do you want ads to appear in
• Position – where in the feed do you want the ads to appear – options are bottom or top
• Channels – same channel system as with the traditional Google AdSense program

While I won’t be able to share many details on how the system performs, I will share as much as I can and also compare it to the other feed advertising programs I’ve tested. I still believe that my feed for a buck proposal is the best way to go.

Riley notes, "He also headed up Yahoo’s business operations for some time before his FeedBurner days. Chicago-based Vibes Media has been creating text message-based marketing campaigns for a full decade. As such, we pity its employees’ social lives; surely chicks can’t be willing to hand over their digits to a guy whose job involves sending out text ads."

We’ve also learned that former head of PR for FeedBurner Traci Hailpern left Google in June.

I am very interested in feedback on the above and your ideas on how RSS will be monetized. This overall discussion could become one of the hot topics later this year.

Here are some of my thoughts on this announcement via video:

A month ago today we wrote that Google AdSense for FeedBurner RSS feeds was coming and today we have learned more details via a blog post on the FeedBurner site. Starting next week, a select group of publishers who are part of the FeedBurner Ad Network (we are part but apparently not in the test group) will begin to push Google AdSense ads out to their feeds.

Eventually the program will open to anyone using Google AdSense and seems to be driven through the AdSense program rather than the FeedBurner program.

FeedBurner suggests that those of us in the Ad Network will continue to run "premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content" — I have watched the number of these premium ads drop like a rock since FeedBurner sold to Google and it was a fear of mine which sadly has been realized.

Maybe after Google AdSense pushes out to the mass, my "buck a feed" concept might actually start to move forward.

Digital Inspiration found some Google ads in feeds a month ago – remember that there’s no JavaScript in a feed so these ads will be run via a HTML imagemap.

The juicy part of the entry was Steve’s comments regarding the FeedBurner integration with Google AdSense. Steve noted:

FeedBurner will start to look and feel more like a set of Google services, and we will be completing much tighter integration into other Google services such as Google AdSense. (If you are a feed advertiser, don’t worry: we have some happy surprises coming for you as well, and if you are an advertiser who is not yet a feed advertiser, you too shall be blessed with good fortune.)

Last month I asked whether FeedBurner had given up on its own ad network. Note that FeedBurner currently serves over 1.5 million feeds. The FeedBurner ad network was one of my absolute favorites over the past year – the CPMs were very high and the ad quality was exceptional. The fill rate wasn’t all that great but overall it was a very impressive program. Looks like the program will probably go bye-bye, replaced with the lovely tiny text ads that only pay on a click or worse, an acquisition. 

Over time what this will mean is that RSS feeds might become cluttered just like Web sites and the quality of ads will be lowered. On a positive note, perhaps this will finally get us talking about my buck a feed concept!

Lastly, I wonder if this move will push some FB publishers away – could this be an ideal opportunity for another RSS play to make a move? Are you looking forward to AdSense in feeds?

Last June I wrote about my somewhat selfish-fears about Google acquiring FeedBurner and what would happen to the ad network. It looks like my fears might just be coming true.

In August FeedBurner began offering a self-service ad model which if you are reading this in a RSS reader you might see one of those ads. Most of these ads are feeds from other sites that rotate through on mine. The CPM rates are mostly $3/CPM with some $6/CPM. Fill rate overall has been ok at best but a nice additional boost in overall fill rate.

What I’ve experienced since the 3rd quarter 2007 is a slow dropoff in the number of big name advertisers using FeedBurner. This was just about the time that FB introduced the ability to run Google AdSense within the Web site ad spot. While AdSense is currently not available inside feeds, could it be far off? I’ve hoped that FB would keep their own sales staff and sell the higher quality ads that they have since the beginning but I fear that we will soon see AdSense in the feeds.

If you are using the FeedBurner ad network for your feed, what’s the fill rate and ad selection look like for you?

Appears that the time shift caused some weirdness at the offices of FeedBurner. I just got a note from Dr. Hung that he is seeing RSS subscriber counts across the FB network being nearly halved from yesterday’s counts. I can confirm that checking the CN count, it is down about 40% from the previous day. This comes nearly a month after the last FeedBurner bug which added 1 million new subscribers to the TechCrunch feed.

And yes, I still stand by my earlier comments that RSS subscriber numbers are the 2007 version of hits. But it’s a concern that actual readers might be affected.

If your subscriber counts are off, please report the % change in the comments below.

Update: Zoli is reporting (in the comments) that Google Feedcatcher is not reporting and that’s the reason for the downward movement.

I first met Dick in June 2004 when Kevin Werbach took pity on me and gave me a pass to attend Supernova. Not only had Dick just decided that txting ruld, but that making it easier to share and consume RSS feeds was very important. He was right on both. What they did with Feedburner was stunning. They made structured XML mark up extremely sexy and business-friendly.

But I’m wasting your time. What you should be reading are my below notes from Dick’s presentation and his recent blog entries on first hires, exit fallacy and start-up offices.

My notes from his talk:

• When hiring, looks for talented-at-anything people, not just position-perfect people. Plans will change and if people can’t move, it’s a major loss.
• Launch late and launch often. (By this he’s suggesting to not launch until you have a lot of features ready or almost ready. Launch with a solid core set, but then keep releasing new features quickly, some of which may have been ready at launch, but held to keep excitement up.)
• Don’t write pre-launch long-term business plans. They’ll be void within months of deployment.
• Keep your org chart as flat as possible for as long as possible. Reporting chains hinder fast, flexible development.
• Speed of execution is a competitive advantage. When you fear “Why won’t Google just copy your product once it’s live?” The answer is becasue we are fast and nimble and they are slow and hamstrung.
• Develop your service and business models the way an optometrist tests your eyes. They try 40 different combo’s of A vs B. to methodically find the best combination.
• Make it as easy as possible for the Markets to determine what your most valuable offering is. Allow them to tell you what your business is. Open, accessible businesses get scrubbed and reviewed by the business people of the world. The wisdom of those markets can often finds your true value offering much faster than you can in your board rooms. Secret, private companies do not get such benefits.
• Open APIs and the like make this happen ever faster. Dick thinks open APIs are a great business advantage as the Markets can even faster scrub your offerings. Even if it means your competition can benefit from it too, you will always be 2 steps ahead of them because you’ll be leading and they’ll be copying.
• You ALWAYS spend more money than you plan. Be brutal with your revenue forecasts and slash them to as small as they could be if nothing new happened other than what you’ve proven. [Ted note: trust me, only count on revenue you’ve already proven. Plan for growth, but do not require your company to achieve it.]
• Compete on your merits, not the short comings of your competitors. Your outward case for your company should be what you do better than anyone else, not that others do it worse than you.

Photo by Ted R. Hosted on Flickr. Trilby tip to Greg Cohn for pointer to Dick’s recent posts.

This article was contributed by Ted Rheingold who is a passionate thirty-something accidental entrepreneur and founder of Dogster and Catster. He writes about the biz and passion-centric online communities at the Dogster, Inc. company blog and his personal blog, Spidey Senses.

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