RSS provider
FeedBurner
is to make its premium news feed management services available to publishers at
no extra charge, just one month after being
acquired by
Google.
FeedBurner's Stats PRO and MyBrand services were previously available for an
additional monthly fee of $5.
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Stats PRO includes tools to allow users to more effectively track stats on
feeds, such as ad metrics and a list of sites publishing the feed.
MyBrand allows users to attach their own URL to a feed which is being served
by FeedBurner. The original charge for the service ranged from $3 to $14,
depending on the number of feeds.
The move follows a pattern for Google, which makes the vast majority of its
money from advertising sales. The company had previously removed charges for
premium services after acquiring such companies as
Blogger,
Picasa
and
Urchin.
Like its parent company, FeedBurner will now rely on ad sales for revenue.
Increasing ad sales had been a constant theme for both companies when the
acquisition was announced.
Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said at the
time of the acquisition that the search giant "constantly aims to give AdWords
advertisers broader distribution to an even wider audience of users".
FeedBurner chief executive Dick Costello told users that the acquisition will
allow them to make more money from Google's huge advertising network.
Users will need to manually activate the Stats PRO and MyBrand services in
order to take advantage of the premium features.
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