donloeb.com

first off…i love friendfeed…it’s become my rss reader, content discovery engine / daily 5 minute break, and primary way to track friends :)

i’ve been meaning to post a list of things i’d like to see friendfeed do…well, fred beat me to it. i agree with him completely and had a number of his on my list…here are a few more that fred didn’t mention, most of which focus on data (think flickr…everyone wants stats!):

1) display all my items that have activity (not just what i’ve commented on) in reverse chron order and listed by most commented and liked

2) allow me to get a daily email update of the activity - even if i’ve logged in recently :)

3) items should be deduped and global stats for each item should be front and center…explore putting it in the UI next to each item (# times this item was shared, # comments, # likes, # clicks, etc.). if it’s too cluttered, at least make “stats” a tab…

4) let me see the most popular items (shares, comments, likes, clicks, movers and shakers (”interestingness”)) over different time periods across my items, my friends’ items, and all of ff…and, turn those into rss feeds :)

5) allow me to share/rebroadcast any item directly from within ff

6) search should be full-text - ff should index the landing pages of all shared links

7) please create a smaller logo :)

re fred’s list, i especially want the ability to display thumbnails of images from blog feeds ala flickr, explode blog posts, and post comments back to flickr ala twitter…

i’ve tried all sorts of things with feedburner and yahoo pipes to create a good feed of me, and i settled on using pipes to splice flickr into my wp source feed with feedburner on the front-end (this works better than the flickr splicer in feedburner as each photo can have flare). that seems to work for my readers (i.,e not too much content), but if you want my complete exhaust, use this feed as it’s a true feed of me…

first off, congratulations to jz, arun, traci, jon, steve, and everyone else…i’m terribly impressed with our team - they pushed this out in record time…

so, what exactly are self-serve feed-powered ads? well, this new service enables publishers to create “live” ad units - i.,e take a custom background image or standard banner and then use feed content to automatically update the ad creative. we’re essentially allowing publishers (of all shapes and sizes) to use the existing headline animator service to develop and then traffic dynamic ad units…

why is this significant? two reasons…(1) it’s super easy for any of our 500k or so publishers to produce compelling creative that doesn’t need to be changed (the ad updates when the feed changes), and (2) these ads are “useful” and fit the feed-reading experience (note: these are not contextually targeted ads). for example, if i’m reading valleywag (yeah, i’ll admit it), i’ll start to see feed-based ads from other publishers (big and small). since i’ll be in “reading mode,” these ads should act as content discovery units…i can then click to preview the content, and if i like what i see, go to the site or subscribe to the feed (of course)…

here are a few examples…

btw, these ads can also be published to web pages and virally spread (see the “grab this” links)…and, we track these headline animators (err…widgets) across the web…

lastly, here’s an older post i wrote on feed-powered ads…

so, i’m running into a meeting, but wanted to do this quick post. today, we made two of our premium services (total stats pro and mybrand) free…yes, free…

publishers now get access to our advanced stats (reach, item level info, etc.) and the ability to keep their own url (feeds.donloeb.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com).

very very exciting…thanks google :)

we can finally talk about this…yes, the rumors are true…we’ve been acquired by google. i’m terribly excited as we have the opportunity to leverage their resources and relationships…this is great for our publishers (both big and small) and the future of rss / distributed media…

we’ll have more information soon re what this means for everyone…so stay tuned…

logo courtesy of google blogoscoped

given that it’s memorial day and we have a lot to think about, this is going to be a relatively short post. but…i wanted to point out a couple of massive changes re how yahoo and facebook think about openness and monetization.

both are significant…but different. and, that’s on purpose as i’m not trying to make an apple to apples comparison between facebook and yahoo’s social apps. in fact, i’m not even including info about delicious, flickr, yahoo 360, mybloglog, upcoming, or yahoo groups…etc. etc. etc…

first off, yahoo decided to test adding “external/non-commercial links” to the frontpage. i’ve known for a while that they were contemplating this, but it looks like they’re doing it now (see mike’s post). this is fantastic for publishers of all sizes across the web - bloggers and others can now take advantage of the firehose that is yahoo.com.

while i applaud this move, yahoo should have done this a while ago. back in the mid-90s, they were focused on organizing the web and helping people find things as quickly and efficiently as possible. somewhere along the way, they forgot about that (except for yahoo search and my yahoo’s groundbreaking rss integration), and instead fell in love with their wonderful on-network margins. yahoo now realizes that enabling discovery (outside of search) is critical - users want to be delighted and they trust yahoo to bring them the best of the web. additionally, yahoo is focused on building an off-network ad network, complete with a suite of publisher services (search, mybloglog, flickr, delicious, etc.). and, traffic (via frontpage programming, rss on my yahoo, and search, etc.) is a necessary building block…

now, contrast this with facebook’s recent announcement re their social operating system. facebook is not only opening up to widgets, etc, but also encouraging developers to leverage facebook’s social graph, i.e., all of the relationships and data…and, it gets even better -> they are allowing developers to put ads directly on facebook web pages…all without revenue sharing. they realize that their core asset is their social graph / people platform. as such, they’re creating an ecosystem that is good for both end-users and developers.

but, what about facebook revenue? all they know is that what’s good for users is good for facebook and monetization will work itself out. besides the obvious benefits of a huge number of incremental pageviews across the facebook service and more rich data about those users, i also think they have a chance to add another type of advertising to their arsenal. facebook has a history of experimenting with application specific advertising and they clearly don’t feel tied to IAB ads. again, they want to create the right experience so that ads actually enhance the product…i.e., like their self-serve campus flyers and sponsored news items. so, what can facebook do with these all of these developers and new apps? well, not everyone is going to be as successful as iLike (congrats hadi!) and therefore can’t just rely on viral distribution. facebook can turn these developers into advertisers and promote their apps as sponsored news items or trial apps, etc. -> perfect for folks in need of distribution and most importantly, useful for facebook users…hmmm… perhaps a “cost per add” fee for all apps…this is very similar to what we’re doing with feed-powered ads and the feedburner ad network -> giving publishers tools and the ability to reach an audience full of opt-in users…

while in many ways this is a leap of faith for facebook, it’s absolutely the right strategic move. i just wish fox, yahoo, and others could do this…maybe they can…

congrats to dave m, james, dave f and the rest of the facebook team…

today, we’re very proud to announce that SFGate is using FeedBurner and is now part of our ad network. they join a bunch of other new FeedBurner customers - AOL, bizjournals, thestreet.com, npr, circuitcity, etc…

so, subscribe. i’m particularly fond of the following feeds: the daily dish, politics blog, tech chronicles blog, mick lasalle - movies, food & dining, green, tom stienstra - outdoors, sfgiants, and of course, cal football podcast…

AOL and the rest of Time Warner, welcome to FeedBurner!

we’ve been working closely with the AOL team for quite a while, and today we’re pleased to announce a wide ranging partnership with AOL / Time Warner. we’re providing a suite of feed-related services designed to help AOL et al. manage, track, and optimize their rss feeds (text & multimedia) as they are consumed in aggregators and personal homepages, via widgets across the web, and of course, devices of all kinds. the folks at AOL realize that to take full advantage of this brave new world of distributed media, they must accurately measure influence wherever and however their content is consumed.

thanks to jen, thomas, rachel, and fj for getting this done…

yesterday we relaunched our feedfoundry product and announced a couple of great new customers, circuit city and npr. with foundry, the feature that is most interesting (to me) is the ability to splice feeds together just by assigning labels. so, we can help publishers do some cms/IT independent things by applying arbitrary labels to feeds and then getting new feeds in the process. for example, bizjournals can label all of their city feeds with the state they are in and voila, they have a california feed or a regional feed, etc. plus, they then get all of the widgets and other tools to help them promote the new feed. pretty cool…

also, last week we upgraded our beloved headline animator product. we essentially did three things: (1) turned on click tracking, (2) enabled publishers to have multiple creatives per feed, and (3) embedded a “grab this” sharing function…

all three pieces are critical, but my favorite is the ability to have multiple creatives. as such, pubs can have email signatures, IAB ad banners, and odd-sized widgets that fit in myspace pages, etc. for instance, while IAB ad units are really important (to create live feed-powered ads), sometimes you just want a little graphic…

couple of great announcements re thestreet.com and a slew of new york centric publishers - congrats rick, eric, and jake! these follow last week’s bizjournals release…when it rains it pours…

for the past few weeks, i’ve been monkeying around wtih how to post my links from myweb, google, delicious, etc. i finally decided that once-a-day summaries from delicious made sense.

at first i used the daily blog posting feature. it’s great, but i don’t blog enough. as a result, my blog became “too delicious.” :) so, i decided to go back to having only real blog posts on my site, but splicing in a daily summary using feedburner’s link splicer. then, those links are only in the feed. of course, i also implemented a sidebar widget (using feedburner’s buzzboost offering) that has my delicious links. so, i think i’ve got everything covered.

the only downside is that my feed now has double postings of my delicious links. it’s temporary..i.,e until i start posting new things, but the posts are there and it’s annoying. so, sorry for mucking up your rss reader.

btw, does anyone have suggestions about how best to do this? i think i’ve found the right solution in that my blog has a set of modules - flickr photos, my delicious and google links, and my blog posts…but my feed has everything. i.e., i’ve spliced stuff together to create a “feed of me” for folks consuming my content via a feed reader.

what does everyone think?