A week and a half ago, FeedBlitz announced it would be taking Google head on, offering a much-needed alternative to FeedBurner in the RSS automation space. (See our initial post) At the time, they said they would "rapidly evolve", and they weren't kidding. In the ensuing ten days, amidst what seems to be yet another Web-wide statistics failure on the part of FeedBurner, the company has written how to guides on leaving FeedBurner behind, how to merge multiple feeds into one, how to keep your own domain associated with your feed, and how to migrate away from FeedBurner once and for all.For the large part, the blogosphere has grown accustomed to FeedBurner flaking every now and again. We've grown weary of long lag times between posts hitting RSS readers after they were written, and in seeing inconsistencies in reader counts, often proudly worn as a badge on users' sites. But what we've also grown accustomed to is FeedBurner's basic nature - it sends your blog out, period.
FeedBlitz is recognizing the world has changed since FeedBurner's debut. They even offer the option to display the most recent updates from social sites, such as FriendFeed and Twitter, along side your feed. At this point, for many, their microblogging is just as full-throttle as their full-length blogging, so that makes sense.
As they have expanded their offerings, FeedBurner and Google seem to not be on speaking terms once again. It happens so often now, nobody blogs about it but not too long ago, such a miss would be ripe for the gnashing of teeth. But said miss has dropped my counts from the 4700 or so range to 1400 and 1800. Who knows why, but the number is pretty random. Even my wife's family-oriented blog dumped from almost 50 subscribers to less than 20. Ouch.
So if you're sick of FeedBurner burning you, I strongly suggest giving FeedBlitz a try. I'm working my way over to switching myself. You can see my FeedBlitzed feed here: http://feeds.feedblitz.com/lg