FeedBurner and Dave

Dave Winer's got a post up talking about the concerns he has about FeedBurner that have grown since the acquistion by Google. Dave's a smart guy and is a big reason we have RSS in the first place. So you have to take his concerns seriously.

But as a former investor in FeedBurner and an active user of the service, I don't share his concerns. I point you all to this post on the FeedBurner blog from June 2005 where FeedBurner explained how easy it is to leave the service if you ever decide to do that.

That gives me all the comfort in the world. I love it when services make it easy to leave. When they do that, I tend to stay.

Comments

[fred wilson]

Dave Winer tried to post this and couldn't get it to go through. So he emailed it to me and I am posting it.
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Fred you're a good guy too, but how does being able to switch help you in the current scenario? Answer -- it doesn't.

And btw, they didn't offer the chance to switch until we made a public issue of it. Until then, it was a total user lock-in. And they had the gall to attack us personally while they were closed.

So while everyone says FB are such nice guys, I don't think you get it. I know you're into open ecosystems. This is a very dangerous situation Fred, very likely to foreclose on an open ecosystem, certainly moving in that direction. Not sure that there's any solution here, btw.

[Berislav Lopac]

Actually, it's the big picture that has to be looked upon. According to all their products and services, as well as their acquisitions, it's obvious that Google wants to concentrate as much tools for gathering user information. If you use their tools -- which are undeniably very useful and well-thought -- they have the power to know what are your interests (Search, Reader, Feedburner...), what do you communicate and whom with (Gmail, Talk, Groups...), what do you do and what are your plans (Documents, Calendar...), where you are and what places interest you (Maps, Earth)...

They have the unique opportunity of being able to track their user's requests -- what was once attributed to Microsoft but they, because of their technology, weren't able to do it. Google is, and they would me mad not to take that opportunity.

[Dave!]

Dave, who is a smart guy--but often wrong--is wrong again. It helps to be able to switch because it's an open market. IF Feedburner were to switch to a proprietary format the users, the people who provide the content that makes up the feed, have the option of expressing our opinion by abandoning the Feedburner feed. Easily. MT, WP, TypePad, Blogger, none are married to Feedburner. That's how it helps you in the current scenario.

No one is *forced* to use Feedburner. Feedburner is a success because people value the service they provide. And if people don't, they are free to leave. That is an incredible power for keeping the company honest. If they make changes users don't want, they destroy their own business. But if they make changes that users don't care about, it doesn't matter. Now, Dave might not be happy if they did that--but he's free to use a different service. And if people value the content he provides enough, they'll still read it. If not, well, that's not exactly Feedburner or Google's fault.

[Colin Henderson]

I am not sure i get the issue here. I understand Daves concern about strategy tax, and how product groups within big companies will drive inefficient decisions on new projects. But RSS is RSS. Everyone can opt out of feedburner and provide their feed directly from their blog, so whats the problem? If FB go proprietary, then they will die, Google or not.
PS ... I would have posted on Daves blog, but in the interests of open conversation he has turned off comments.

[Ian Betteridge]

I just can't see a coherent argument from Dave here, and he's not helping by posting these cryptic "comments" all across the blog world.

Where there is zero cost from switching from one platform to another (in this case, from a putative "closed non-RSS" Feedburner to plain old RSS) and there is no information loss from doing so (your old posts won't have changed, your users will be able to find you) there is no lock-in.

Unless Dave can put forward an argument which demonstrates *how* exactly using FeedBurner "forecloses on an open ecosystem" all he's doing is spouting FUD.

[steve]

I also had trouble understanding exactly what Dave's point was until I read this comment.

What I bet keeps Dave up at night is the fact that Google could turn all the RSS feeds to Atom feeds and no one would give a damn. Suddenly there are more Atom feeds than RSS feeds and Dave’s beloved (and possibly largely manufactured) legacy starts to go down the drain.

It seems that when Dave refers to open ecosystems, what he really means are systems that are only open to change towards his work - and never the other way around.