Update: My gratitude to Jeff Clavier, Deeje Cooley, and my most frequent commentor, Anonymous, for their links and answers; immensely helpful. To the rest of you... don't make me beg... it won't be pretty. ;-p

I'm currently doing some thinking about so-called Feed Management Services companies(FeedBurner, Pheedo, Moreover, Syndicate IQ, etc), a topic that I have touched on from time to time.

I'm interested in hearing some honest feedback from both readers of managed Feeds and Feed Owners who are using Feed Management Services (FMS).

Looking through my aggregator, I note that I read the following managed Feeds (many more than I thought, and all via FeedBurner):

• Jeff Clavier's Software Only
• Feedburner's Burn This!
• Venture Blog
• Steve Rubel's Micropersuasion
• Ross Mayfield's Ross Mayfield Weblog
• Pamela Parker Caird's The River
• Digital Media Jobs Blog

For the most part, the fact that these Feeds are managed is transparent to me (which I imagine, is by design). The minor exception to this is that many of the Feeds (above) embed a small, persistent image or logo to personalize their Feed; nice, but trivial.

My questions to readers of managed Feeds are:

• A) Does the fact that a Feed is being managed effect your willingness to subscribe to it?
• B) Does the fact that a Feed is managed impact your reading experience? If so, how?
• C) If the Feed Management Service were to go out of business, or if the Feed Owner decided to abandon the service, would you update your aggregator to reflect the new URL?

And, for Feed Owners:

1. Which FMS service(s) (e.g., measurement, free bandwidth, advertising, etc) motivated you to sign-up?
2. What FMS services have you added on over time?
3. How long has your Feed been managed?
4. What would cause you to abandon the managed Feed approach?
5. What would cause you to switch to a different FMS provider?
6. What services do you wish your FMS offered?
7. What difference has having your Feed managed made to you, from either (or both) an authoring or monetizing perspective?
8. Anything else you'd care to share!

I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this, and would appreciate you leaving a comment (if you care to participate) so that the entire community can benefit from your thoughts. If, for whatever reason, you'd prefer to share your thoughts privately, please email me at: fms !@! buzzhit dot com (no spam version obviously: no exclamation points, one contiguous address, etc).

While I've never asked for a link before, if you read this, and don't mind tossing a link this way, I'd greatly appreciate the support. (NOFOLLOWS are perfect; not looking for juice, just awareness.) Thanks!

Tag: FeedManagementServiceAdoption