Today, FeedBurner announced that it has acquired Blogbeat. Congrats Jeff. Congrats FeedBurner.
On February 22nd, I installed Blogbeat (ah – the joys of a good stats package – it’s easy to find out the day you started using it.) On February 28th, I wrote an updated “New and Exciting Stats” post on my blog where I mentioned Blogbeat. I’m a stats junkie – I was the seed investor in one of the first web analytics companies (NetGenesis) and had one of my big investment successes with another (Service Metrics). Stats have been very good to me.
I liked Jeff Turner (Blogbeat creator) from the first time I met him (via email). I had a very similar experience with Jeff that I did the first time I interacted with Dick Costolo (FeedBurner CEO and co-founder). In both cases, I was messing around with their stuff and I had a problem. I sent an email asking a question. Within minutes I had a response, an answer, a suggestion, and a conversation going.
Jeff was one of the first people I knew to exercise the FeedBurner API and integrate FeedBurner subscriber info into his stats. He got it – and knew what to do with it. As FeedBurner continued to build out depth in their stats, it made sense to take a classical “build vs. buy” approach. The fit with Jeff / Blogbeat was great. Hopefully you’ll agree when the new, integrated products roll out in Q4.
Lest you think I’m one-dimensional, email has also been very good to me.