The relationship between Google and Twitter has been somewhat rocky lately. Last year, the two companies were unable to reach an agreement that would continue to give Google access to the Twitter firehose to better its search results. For that reason, Google’s realtime search feature disappeared. When Google launched “Search Plus Your World,” integrating Google+ content more heavily into its search results, Twitter raised a big stink about how it was bad for the Internet, and noting that Google should be showing Twitter results for some queries where it was favoring Google+ results. Google’s response was: “We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.” But Google does still show Twitter results, and it is in cases where Google has every right to show them, but doesn’t, that Twitter appears to have the biggest problem. The tensions even led to the cancellation of a meeting between the two companies that may have otherwise resulted in a better Twitter experience on Android devices. But that’s all old news at this point. There was an interesting post in WebmasterWorld about another subtle disconnect between Google and Twitter, which could be related to the deterioration of the relationship between the two companies, or could just be a coincidence. It’s interesting nonetheless. WebmasterWorld member Sgt Kickaxe posted in the forum: Im not sure if anyone’s noticed or written about this yet but the Twitter option in feedburner [webmasterworld.com] has gone awol. In fact the entire “socialize” option link now appears missing. The service is still active (for now), you can manually navigate to the socialize page by typing the address in your navigation bar. old address: feedburner.google.com/fb/a/socialize?id=YOURIDHERE What I liked about the service was that it automatically used Google’s shortening service for links which comes with analytics. At this point the service is still active though unreachable if you don’t know the address so it may be taken offline, eventually, or perhaps it will just stop accepting NEW connections but will not change existing connections, or? Perhaps Google simply decided to stop promoting twitter altogether after their fallout over tweet indexing. Who knows. My guess is that this is not directly related to the company politics between Google and Twitter. If that were the case, I’d expect other Twitter features to be missing from Google products as well – like the share on Twitter option from Google Reader or YouTube. Removal of things like this would hurt the user experience.

The FeedBurner re-design has been in beta testing for a few months now, but does it make the service better? I’m a big fan of FeedBurner and I really like the new look and feel as it’s much cleaner and matches other Google products, however since it’s so familiar, it feels a little lacking. At this time there is no way to select a date range other than the pre-defined time periods that are offered, there is no way to export data, and there is no way to tie data points together; such as referring URLs to posts. What I’d really like to see is FeedBurner integrate this information into Google Analytics. The two services are very similar in what they do, and how they look, that it feels like they should live together. Hopefully then FeedBurner could utilize some of the great features in Google Analytics to make this data more robust. Other than the new design, the only other new item is the fact that it does real-time analytics. This lets you use what impact your new post has on the web moments after you publish it. Now if you really have time to sit down and watch your analytics in real-time, good for you. But I doubt many will see this as a usable feature. Instead, I’d like to see FeedBurner give users more customization and social interaction. Integration into Twitter is great, but what about Facebook? Are there other destinations that could benefit from updates? What about seeing status updates that include our FeedBurner URL so we can really see how it’s being syndicated? What about some additional feed customization? The basic ‘clean’ template is ancient in terms of internet age and it’d be nice to see even basic customization like Twitter offers. How about the ability to share a FeedBurner account with multiple Google accounts? Much like Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, sometimes more than one person wants to analyze the data. How about some nice charts and data points like Feed Analysis offers? These charts are well received by those that don’t get the data. It just seems to me that FeedBurner has just maintained its presence since it was acquired by Google in 2007. Little changes have been happening over the years, but it still feels like it’s not living up to its potential. Maybe it’s the lack of competition, or maybe the FeedBurner teams feels it doesn’t need to be any more than it already is, however I’d like to see FeedBurner step up its game and become much more valuable to marketers and site owners. Originally published at bloggerdesign.

Google made a couple of announcements today that actually combined for perhaps a more interesting announcement than either of them as stand-alone news items. First, Google has added a new share button to the Google Toolbar, which allows users to share any site on the web via their social network of choice. Second, Google announced that with Feedburner, you can now set your feeds up to post to Twitter. The thing that these two announcements have in common is that they both utilize a new URL shortener from Google. They tried to slip that in their quietly a couple of times, but then went ahead and made an announcement about the service itself. The shortening service is located at goo.gl, but it is not available for broad consumer use at this point. Google is just using it itself to compliment the aforementioned services. In other words, you can’t just go to goo.gl and shorten a URL yourself. However, Google says that in time, it may offer such an option. "We think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible — making it faster and easier to share, post and email links," Google says. They also say the core goals of the Google URL Shortener are: - Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime - Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages - Speed – fast resolution of short URLs Google’s standard privacy policy applies to goo.gl. The company says that it may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end use clicks. On a related note, Facebook also now has its own URL shortener.   Related Articles: > Who Owns Your Content? > Ushering In a Whole New Era of Linking Questions > Short URL Spam a Big Threat in August

The desire to integrate products is strong at Google; it’s not hard to imagine that the company would eventually like to offer one great, big search/video/email/advertising ball.  And today, it took a tiny step along that path by rolling together some analytics products. A post on the AdSense for Feeds blog announced, “If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site.” The post then continued, “Specifically, we will help you classify your links by tagging the Source as ‘feedburner,’ the Medium as the channel in which we sent out your feed such as ‘feed’ or ‘email,’ and the Content as the actual endpoint application in which the user viewed your feed content such as ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Yahoo! Mail.’” More distribution endpoint labels are on the way, too. Hopefully this update will help people earn a little extra money heading into the holidays.  At the least, it may simplify FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds users’ lives a little, which would also represent a nice treat this time of year. Related Articles: > Google Launches Analytics For Mobile Apps > Correcting Your Web Analytics Mistakes > FeedBurner/Google Alum Goes To Twitter

It looks like Twitter’s filled another hole in its lineup of key executives.  The title of Chief Operating Officer should go to Dick Costolo, who was the cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner and also did a stint at Google post-acquisition. Costolo left Google about two months ago.  His LinkedIn profile claims that, since then, he’s been working for Monkey Beach Crime, Inc.  (Chalk this odd tale up to Costolo’s former career as a comedian). Michael Arrington provided a more likely story by writing this afternoon, "Dick Costolo is Twitter’s new chief operating officer, we’ve heard from multiple sources. . . .  We’d heard he was looking to start a new company, but obviously Twitter swooped in and grabbed him." Since he’s worked for both a startup and a corporate giant with a $144 billion market cap, Costolo may be in a good position to help Twitter mature as a business.  Experience on both ends of that scale is hard to come by and often quite valuable. If – and this is an if that at least a few people are thinking about – Google tries to buy Twitter, Costolo could probably help there, too.

An important figure at Google may be about to leave, according to a new report.  Dick Costolo, the cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner, is supposed to depart the corporation sometime this week. Michael Arrington apparently confirmed the news today, and with regards to what Costolo has been up to since the $100 million FeedBurner acquisition, continued, "He currently reports to Neal Mohan, an exec in the Ads group, as the group product manager for social ads." What Costolo will do next remains unknown.  He may want to start another company, join an existing entity, or pursue some big idea. Or, as a few select tweets of his sort of imply, Costolo (who’s toured Australia, Singapore, and the UK as part of an improv comedy team) may just be preparing to spend more time with his family and generally take it easy.  Regardless, since Google acquired FeedBurner almost exactly two years ago (the official announcement was made on June 1st, 2007), this development doesn’t say much about the search giant’s ability to retain talent; it looks like Costolo’s quitting within days of some contract’s expiration date.

It’s been slowly coming for a very long time. Google announced that they’d acquired FeedBurner back in May 2007. Only eleven months later (*eye roll*), in April 2008, the two finally began their integration. And now it’s complete. Last night, FeedBurner was the same website. Today, feedburner.com redirects (with masking) to google.com and www.feedburner.com gives the Google login: Once you sign in, however, you find the old FeedBurner layout. If you’re a FeedBurner user, you’ve probably seen the promptings to migrate your feeds to Google. As the above screenshot assures you, there’s still time. In fact, the front-page–only change may just be a ploy to reluctant or lazy users to migrate faster. Have you seen this change? Comments

The Adsense-meets-Feedburner era has officially begun. As mentioned here, the slow "Googlization" of Feedburner has gotten underway, and on Friday, the public got to see some Adsense ads in Feedburner feeds. A couple months ago some publishers began displaying them, but now they are in full swing. The beginning of Feedburner’s Adsense era came just shortly after they closed down the FeedBurner Ad Network, a movie that Meghan Keane at Wired.com billed as "The beginning of the End for Feedbuner?" A little harsh perhaps. With the popularity of Adsense added to the existing popularity of Feedburner, the move doesn’t exactly sound the alarm of death in my ears. Many are bound to be irritated by the move, but you’re never going to make everybody happy. I think Adsesne and Feedburner will get along with each other just fine. According to previous comments on the Feedburner Weblog, publishers will be able to manage their feed ad units straight from the AdSense Setup tab, and track performance from the AdSense Report tab. Sounds convenient to me.

About a month ago, it was hinted at that Feedburner would start incorporating AdSense into feeds as a product of its acquisition by Google. It appears that time is approaching with feeds for some publishers getting ready to start displaying AdSense ads this week. Steve over at the official Feedburner Weblog tells publishers what to expect: So what will this mean for you? Well, publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory. That means you get the best of both worlds: a dedicated Google sales force that knows how and why to sell onto your content, with the added revenue that full back-fill coverage provides. And with AdSense, you’ll know that your back-filled ads are using the strongest contextual ad engine, ensuring the most relevant and profitable ads are delivered to your subscribers. And yes, ads are also sold via Google’s AdWords program. This seems to just be the next logical step in the "Googlization" of Feedburner. Publishers will be able to manage their feed ad units straight from the AdSense Setup tab, and track performance from the AdSense Report tab. "You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content units, or keep them totally separate," says Steve. Feedburner promises more details with their full AdSense launch coming in the near future. .  

Almost 11 months ago, Google announced its acquisition of FeedBurner.  Now, FeedBurner finally seems ready to make some aesthetic changes and more serious overhauls.  Steve Olechowski Steve Olechowski, the cofounder and COO of FeedBurner, wrote of things that will affect "selected publishers" in a note on the official FeedBurner blog.  One difference is that the first people to be affected by the rollout will be able to sign in with their Google account info.  Okay, so you’re not wildly applauding yet. Another adjustment is getting some genuinely strong reactions on the opposite end of the spectrum, though, and that’s the planned integration of AdSense.  Allen Stern observed, "The FeedBurner ad network was one of my absolute favorites over the past year – the CPMs were very high and the ad quality was exceptional. He then continued, "Looks like the program will probably go bye-bye, replaced with the lovely tiny text ads that only pay on a click or worse, an acquisition.  Over time what this will mean is that RSS feeds might become cluttered just like Web sites and the quality of ads will be lowered." The way in which Google and FeedBurner handle this will have a huge impact on users’ (and advertisers’) responses, of course; opt-out buttons or especially well-targeted ads could smooth everything over.  Unrelated changes are supposedly in the works, too, so users will have some incentive to stick around and see the final product.