ReadBurner burst onto the scene in January, offering the first serious attempt to harness the power of shared link blogs from Google Reader, and determine what RSS feed items were the most popular, democratically assigning equal weight to each person's share, instead of relying on proprietary algorithms, like TechMeme, Megite, BlogRunner and others do. But only two months after seeing the site jump into the public conscious, written up by major blogs, from Mashable, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Lifehacker (See: The Buzz), developer Alexander Marktl has decided to shutter the site, saying he just doesn't have the time to keep the site up and running, with real life getting in the way.In my opinion, ReadBurner was the #1 new site to debut in January. It filled a necessary gap from today's RSS readers, and transparently identified who was reading my RSS feed, and sharing my items. From the time I first found the site, to weeks afterward, ReadBurner spawned multiple clone sites who similarly saw the potential, from Dennes Abing's Shared Reader to Benjamin Golub's RSSMeme. But February was very quiet for ReadBurner, as Marktl let the site idle, and Golub continued to develop on RSSMeme, adding new features multiple times a week in a seeming virtual two-man arms race.
And now, it looks like RSSMeme has won, with Marktl's goodbye message pointing to Golub's alternative, giving him the nod with "a very well done clone". In fact, Marktl is getting so far out of the business that he's even offering to sell the ReadBurner.com name.
Does this mean ReadBurner failed? Absolutely not, as far as a technology concept goes. The idea of sharing links, and learning what's popular is a central tenet of many of the major sites we've seen debut on louisgray.com in 2008, from LinkRiver to Shyftr to RSSMeme, AssetBar and others. But it didn't capitalize on the early buzz and first-mover advantage, and will go into the all too full dustbin of Web apps history.
For a little history on ReadBurner, see previous coverage:
ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items
ReadBurner's Unplanned Big First Day Shows Real Promise
ReadBurner Goes from 0 to 12,000+ In Four Days
ReadBurner Keeps Improving With Stats and Upcoming Items
ReadBurner Revamps Look, Adds Images Features