Google’s FeedBurner Problems on the FrontBurner: You’re SOL
I held off on transferring my feeds to FeedBurner, but was eventually convinced that it was going to help more than hurt.
Today, I’m strongly considering taking my feeds back – out of the hands of FeedBurner / Google. I’m definitely not the only one who is discontent with FeedBurner’s service. There have been several reports of problems, but very little reassurance that FeedBurner has stayed true to the users that helped build the service.
I noticed the other day that when I was the fifth blogger to write about the TechCrunch tablet, my post did not show up in TechMeme. Odd. I know I’m in the list, and I know I sourced the original post and wrote plenty about the topic.
Turns out, my freakin’ FeedBurnered feed isn’t rendering much more than the first two sentences of any given post – without links. I knew something had been off for a while, but didn’t realize the problem was THAT bad. For some reason unknown to FeedBurner engineers, items that used to show full content are no longer showing full content to some aggregators.
Unacceptable.
Their response? I’m “SOL” (their term, not mine):
This is an issue of the particular browsers choosing to render the description element in their display instead of the content element. I think he’s SOL. In fact, I see the same artifact in both his source feed and FB feed in Firefox. If you force the system to do server-site browser-friendly rendering… you see full content.
So, is it my source feed that’s causing problems, or the FeedBurner feed?
chris.pirillo.com/feed/ – Source
feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirillo – FeedBurner
Do you see any difference between those two feeds in your aggregator / browser? I know this post won’t show up on TechMeme, either – so there’s little chance other FeedBurner users will see…
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16 Comments
Stereo Radiation
January 22nd, 2009
at 10:43am
There is less data to show, the titles of my pre-migration posts have disappeared the graphs are barely readable.
And I think I am one of the ones who thought the migration went fairly well!
You think Google, providing a service to hundreds of thousands of BLOGGERS and PODCASTERS, would make these individuals feel especially welcome, lest they convey their disenchantment with Google in their blog.
Allen
January 22nd, 2009
at 11:25am
thanks for the link! the feed looks the same for me in both of your links
Steve Woolf
January 22nd, 2009
at 11:50am
I was nervous about changing over, too. I can tell you that your source feed only shows a snippet of the content and the Feedburner feed shows everything when I click on the links and view in Firefox. However when I use Feedproxy to view the code of the source feed it looks complete and formatted. fwiw.
tomartomartini
January 22nd, 2009
at 12:48pm
so Chris FeedBurner not working ,,so where …taking my feeds
back also ; my feed isn’t producing much more than the first couple sentences of each post – links have vanished..this is a bummer.
Daan Berg
January 22nd, 2009
at 12:53pm
Hi Chris,
I tested both links, and the contents are the same. They match.
Well, hope you find a solution soon!
- Daan.
John
January 22nd, 2009
at 1:36pm
Chris, they look identical to me. I am beginning to think I should move from FeedBurner as well. Sheesh.
John
Dick Costolo
January 22nd, 2009
at 2:56pm
Hey Chris,
Based on my understanding of how you’re viewing the content, the issue is truly with how Firefox chooses to display the feed content itself; it is choosing the abbreviated element over the extended element. It’s going to vary as widely as there are different ways to display feeds in readers/aggregators/browsers. On the Mac, Safari displays the element, but omits embed tags (such as YouTube videos). There is truly nothing to “fix”, as it were, since the feed is valid and offering content exactly the way your web server is composing it: with two alternative treatments for each item.
The particular use of language in the note forwarded to you is, to my admittedly untrained communications eye, unfortunate.
There’s numbers and there’s confusing bullshit numbers - WinExtra
January 22nd, 2009
at 4:44pm
[...] – especially since it was sucked into the black hole known as Google Acquisitions. People like Chris Pirillo; who is actually thinking of leaving the service, and Allen Stern are pointing out the simple fact [...]
Bill Soistmann
January 22nd, 2009
at 6:43pm
Actually, the FB feed shows me complete descriptions and your source shows truncated descriptions.
I’ve had nothing but trouble with FB for years (for clients who insisted I set it up) so what I see surprises me.
I’ve recently switched to using FB myself, so if there is a problem I am leaving and not going back.
Bill Soistmann
January 22nd, 2009
at 6:45pm
UPDATE:
You asked for comparisons of what the browser renders. My check was with FF3/Mac.
I just checked the source and I can see that my browser renders the description you have in the source (truncated). Feedburner apparently is rending your content:encoded.
Hope this helps.
Kyle Dylan Conner
January 22nd, 2009
at 7:24pm
I’m taking all of my feeds off of Feedburner tomorrow. They’re only showing me half of my subscriber count and I’m having the same problem with links.
Kosso
January 22nd, 2009
at 8:30pm
ironically, I found this post via Techmeme :)
But I would never trust feedburner with my feeds. Way too much ‘tag soup’!
Nash
January 23rd, 2009
at 9:38am
I use Google Reader and I see no difference in the feeds whatsoever.
Livecrunch
January 23rd, 2009
at 12:32pm
They fixed my feeds (kind of). I see few more things, I think they are repaaring netvibes hack that happened about few months ago. I was one of the victims on my other blog. Some 1 thought it was a joke to add another 500 fake subscribers. Now I saw it’s all good.
Btw your feeds are ok. To me … maybe u should switch and see what works best for you?
Feeds.google.com/
Feeds2.google.com/
Feedproxy.google.com
I loved feedburner.com/myfeed. :( so miss that!
Looks Like Google FeedBurner Fixed My Account
January 23rd, 2009
at 12:39pm
[...] are few blog posts you might be interested reading: Chris Pirillo:Google’s FeedBurner Problems on the FrontBurner: You’re SOL CenterNetworks:Why Do We Use FeedBurner and What Alternatives Are Available for Feed Management? [...]
Neal Schaffer
August 11th, 2009
at 8:40pm
My Feedburner feed stopped working yesterday for no reason. The only thing I can think of is I recently started using Disqus to manage my comments, but I couldn’t find any information on a potential issue on the Internet.
I am moving over to FeedBlitz. Not happy about their User Interface, but I don’t mind paying a little if I can get some real customer support. ProBlogger using them makes me feel good as well.
Any other alternatives that you might recommend?