A new Internet boom is emerging with the growing popularity of syndicated content in the form of Web logs, commercial newsfeeds and podcasts, audio broadcasts that are simple to record and can be downloaded onto MP3players such as iPods or other devices.
FeedBurner, a Chicago-based technology startup, is poised to help the writers, publishers and broadcasters who create this content capitalize on the boom.
FeedBurner is focused on building tools that tap into the power of RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, a technology standard for publishing regular updates to Web-based content.
"We saw RSS as the wave of the future of how publishers would distribute their content," said Steve Olechowski, chief operating officer of FeedBurner and a cofounder with three other former consultants from Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). "Most major media companies, newspaper syndicates and magazine publishers, are looking to RSS as part of their strategy."
FeedBurner provides a suite of Web-based services to help publishers -- from one-person operations on up to major commercial media companies -- with tools to manage all aspects of syndication. The services simplify tracking circulation and delivering content to the right place in the right format. Advertisers are using FeedBurner to buy space in the new media, providing a new revenue stream for the content creators.
Blogs -- which provide narrow information, such as Olechowski's personal blog on cars with Bluetooth technology -- are attractive to well-defined readers.
Rick Klau, vice president of business development at FeedBurner, said many advertisers have been reluctant to buy ads because there had been no way to measure circulation. He said FeedBurner overcame these problems by developing new ways to manage feeds, insert ads into RSS feeds and measure readership.
The company's business model is built around a combination of sharing ad revenue primarily for large commercial publishers and its suite of premium services to measure detailed circulation.
"We now manage more feeds for more publishers than any other feed management service," Klau said.
Nearly 70,000 publishers use FeedBurner, ranging from Chicago-based Coudal Partners, an advertising, design and interactive firm, to VNU Business Media in Europe, a global media company and parent of ACNielsen, Billboard and other major brands.
VNU, in cooperation with FeedBurner, recently launched Europe's first syndicated feed-based advertising program. FeedBurner also signed agreements with Bokee, the largest blog service company in China.
In addition to managing content-based feeds, a large portion of FeedBurner's volume comes from podcasters. Today, the company manages nearly 16,000 podcasts.
FeedBurner faces some competition, but Klau maintained FeedBurner has an advantage because of the large volume of feed traffic it manages.
Alex Golimbu, a managing partner and co-founder of Morpheus Media, a New York-based interactive ad agency, said FeedBurner has helped his clients' campaigns. RSS advertising adds to the mix of interactive campaigns that also include search engines and banner ads, he said.
"Feedburner allows us to reach our clients' audiences in a new and impactful forum," he said. "By serving contextually relevant advertising in RSS feeds and blogs, we are able to reach users with appropriate messaging that directly relates to what they are reading at that moment."
FeedBurner has won the attention of venture capitalists, attracting more than $7 million in investment from Portage Venture Partners in Chicago, Mobius Venture Capital in Denver and Sutter Hill Ventures in Silicon Valley.
"FeedBurner is one of the key players in the exploding RSS, podcasting and blogging world," said Portage managing director Matthew B. McCall. The founders and their team "saw this wave coming over two years ago and positioned themselves as the dominant service provider to publishers and is growing virally in the double-digit percentages. Even Apple, on its Web site, refers all podcasters worldwide to use FeedBurner to interface into iTunes. Since all content on the Web can be tagged using RSS and processed, this is an enormous opportunity."
FeedBurner, which does not disclose revenues, has 14 employees, up from five in March.
Olechowski expects even bigger things to come from RSS: "We've only seen a fraction of the uses of RSS that will come about in the coming years. We think it's totally possible that most devices--your phone, your TV, and even your refrigerator, will have some sort of RSS client embedded in it in the next few years."
Founders were into blogging from get-go
The founders of FeedBurner, a Chicago startup aimed at turning blogging and related new media into advertising mediums, were into blogging before blogging was even called blogging.
Back in 1996, four former consultants from Andersen Consulting with an entrepreneurial bent started Digital Knowledge Assets, maker of software that enabled users to publish and share their thoughts on the Internet. The software foreshadowed today's blogging craze.
A2S2 acquired Digital Knowledge Assets in 1998.
The foursome -- Dick Costolo, Steve Olechowski, Eric Lunt and Matt Shobe -- next started Spyonit.com, which enabled Web users to receive alerts when Web sites were updated. This feature is available today from blogging platforms as well as from Google and Yahoo. 724 Solutions, a wireless infrastructure company, purchased Spyonit in 2000.
In February 2004, the group started FeedBurner to manage feeds, insert ads and measure traffic for publishers of blogs.
