Feedburner Email Subscriptions Discontinued

FeedBurner Infrastructure Update and Email Subscription Deprecation

Google has recently announced a transition for FeedBurner, moving it to a new infrastructure. Simultaneously, the company is discontinuing its email subscription functionality.

A Look Back at FeedBurner's History

For many long-time internet users, FeedBurner was a crucial tool for managing RSS feeds from blogs and early podcasts. It became the standard for feed management and analytics during the Web 2.0 period.

Established in 2004, with Dick Costolo as a co-founder (prior to his role as Twitter’s CEO in 2010), the service was acquired by Google in 2007.

Lingering in Limbo

Since the acquisition, FeedBurner existed in a unique state. While Google discontinued popular services like Google Reader to pursue projects like Google+, FeedBurner continued to operate.

Despite gradual deprecation of certain features, particularly advertising integrations, the service remained functional. Shutting it down entirely could disrupt tools used by publishers, potentially causing significant issues.

For example, the TechCrunch RSS feed, accessible at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TechCrunch/, is a widely used resource.

Changes and Future Outlook

Fourteen years after the acquisition, Google is now focused on “supporting the product’s next chapter” by migrating FeedBurner to a more reliable infrastructure.

However, in July, several non-essential features will be removed, most notably the email subscription service. This service allowed users to receive email notifications upon feed updates.

Email Subscriber Data

FeedBurner account holders will have the ability to download their email subscriber lists, both before and after the July change. Consequently, Blogger’s FollowByEmail widget will also be deprecated.

Core Features Remain

Google assures users that the core functionalities of FeedBurner will continue to be available. Nevertheless, the removal of the email subscription feature seems counterintuitive given the current popularity of email newsletters.