FIR Interview: FeedBlitz CEO Phil Hollows on RSS and the future of Feedburner

FeedBlitzIn May, Google quietly announced it would shut down the API for FeedBurner, the most popular tool for managing and measuring RSS feeds. While the service will continue to process RSS feeds—only third-party apps that use the service will be affected—Google has been quiet about the service’s future, telling TechCrunch as recently as September 24 that the company had nothing to announce. Meanwhile, speculation is rampant that the long-neglected service for which Google paid $100 million back in 2007 will eventually be shuttered, leading many to explore alternatives and others to take action, migrating their feeds to alternative services.

One of those services is FeedBlitz, “The All-In-One Solution for Email & Social Media Marketing Automation.” Since concerns arose over how long FeedBurner will remain viable, FeedBlitz has been marketing itself as (among other things) a reliable FeedBurner alternative, even providing a step-by-step guide to importing your existing FeedBurner subscribers to your new FeedBlitz account. In this FIR interview, co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with FeedBlitz founder and CEO Phil Hollows about the vital role RSS continues to play, the situation with FeedBurner and the various options (not limited to FeedBlitz) available to bloggers and others who rely on RSS feeds.

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About our Conversation Partner

Phil HollowsPhil Hollows is the Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz, an email and social media marketing automation service and premium FeedBurner alternative.

Building on his high technology experience, consulting and marketing leadership since graduating from Oxford University in 1987 (The Queen’s College), Phil started what became FeedBlitz in 2005. Phil is the author of the free FeedBurner Migration Guide, and the e-book List Building for Bloggers.

Before creating FeedBlitz, Phil was Vice President Product Marketing for enterprise network security management company OpenService (now LogMatrix), and before that he was the Vice President of Technology at the web testing company RadView Software.

Phil’s international career also includes being a Director at enterprise workforce management software leader Kronos, and Managing Consultant for the US office of UK-based niche executive financial consultancy Metapaxis. He has a post-graduate diploma in Accounting and Finance from the UK’s ACCA.

Follow Phil on Twitter as @phollows.

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This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 09/27 at 09:55 AM

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