Blogs Need Email

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1. Mr. Rhee
   

   February 13th, 2006 at 11:08 pm

   It’s on our backburner now.

2. Steven Frein
   

   February 13th, 2006 at 11:45 pm

   Do we need to move backwards? Why not look forward and let RSS catch on. Email is a terrible medium to get content. I filter through enough crap, I can’t imagine all my feeds in my in box. Can’t people spend more time making RSS better and stop with the web 2.0 nonsense.

3. Shrikant Joshi
   

   February 14th, 2006 at 12:48 am

   Ok, so we now have:
   1. coComment
   2. co.mments
   3. myComments

   And now eMails?

   Can’t we have an umbrella instead of scraps?

4. Clyde Smith
   

   February 14th, 2006 at 12:50 am

   What you say you ask for is what FeedBlitz offers, not that I’m promoting FeedBlitz, actually I’m evaluating them now.

   But you ask for:
   *zero service provider branding on emails
   * I am in control of the email list; no spamming by the service provider
   * options on frequency of emails
   * options on email template

   You say you’re willing to pay for them and FeedBlitz offers all that for a fee and would allow you to get rid of the orange branding and send newsletters separately. So are you penalizing FeedBlitz for not giving you that stuff for free?

   By the way, when did you start blogging? For many of us, at least a couple who are serious about blogging, Bloglet was the early legitimate offering and it’s only been in the last half a year or so that they really lost it.

   You know, there’s a reason FeedBlitz focused on wooing Bloglet users.

   In any case, I’m not totally happy with FeedBlitz but they seem to be heading in the right direction.

   Clyde

5. Shrikant Joshi
   

   February 14th, 2006 at 12:51 am

   Sorry about the double post. Please nuke the earlier of the two. The third link is wrong.

   Apologies again. (You can nuke this one too.)

6. Sameer
   

   February 14th, 2006 at 1:13 am

   I’ve been using bloglet.com for quite some time on my blog now, and although it’s somewhat unreliable and the last “News” on the site dates back to March 2004, it still works.

   I tried shifting over to FeedBlitz, and I must mention that their bloglet import tool is brilliant. I’d have made the move, but then I found their huge, imposing ORANGE header being inserted in the feed mails and the visually destructive formatting of the emails, with huge fonts and mismatched colors.

   Frankly, I’m much better off with Bloglet’s plain jane text mails, than Feedblitz’s advertizing banners for emails.

7. Luistxo
   

   February 14th, 2006 at 1:29 am

   RssFwd.com is an excellent free service.

8. Marius Popescu
   

   February 14th, 2006 at 4:05 am

   I subscribe to Luistxo comment. I am currently using RssFwd. I did an evaluation some time ago on them and R-mail. You can see it here: http://mapopescu.blogsome.com/.....valuation/

   Maybe you coud contact RssFwd.com which is run with an open source Rails library and try to get what you need.

9. John Jantsch
   

   February 14th, 2006 at 4:18 am

   Mike - I’ve been using an autoresponder service for a number of years now called AWeber to deliver my email newsletter. They have been pretty progressive about adding RSS and other features. About 3 months ago they added an email subscription RSS feed

   It does everything you mentioned. You control the subscriber form, the list is yours and you create the template - I send mine out in HTML so my RSS feed looks very much like my branded site.

10. Bjorn Lee
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 4:20 am

    not relevant to this post. But i was just checking Techcrunch Francaise and the stats dun look too good. Why doesn’t techcrunch go Chinese? I am sure millions in China are crying out loud for something like your blog…

11. Jie Kang
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 5:10 am

    It’s moving backwards to subscribe to blogs with email. Instead, we should make RSS easier to use and give our inbox a break.

12. michael
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 6:13 am

    I agree. For a good while now I have been talking up RSS forwarding to email. I am sure most people spend a significant amount of time using email. I know that I have gmail open all day as I work. Installing and learning to use another rss reader app or web service does not make sense in my world… I dont want to shift my attention around to multiple user interfaces if i dont have to.

    this has nothing to do with ending the evolution of RSS, as one comment suggests. A service providing RSS forwarding to email can co-evolve if need be, but in truth the basics are all a user really needs.

    Using gmail, as an example, i can completely manage my RSS subscriptions by using labels and filters.
    The messages come through logically using RSS Channel Name as the From name, Post Title as the Subject and the source permalink is included with the content… which can be html or text.
    It’s a natural use of RSS on the subscriber end. Content is king, right?
    Well i get my RSS content emailed directly to me and can access the content wherever I am (since i use gmail).

    Someone here mentioned rssfwd.com. This is the service that I use. It’s clean and intuitive and I love it.

    I have deployed the same service for the videoblogging community at http://vlogdir.com. Videoblog posts, including link to the RSS item enclosure (the video) are sent to users.
    As the audience who want and should be able to easily use RSS widens and varies, email will become more apparent as a logical use of subscription handling for RSS, just as it always has been for email newsletters and alerts.
    Some things dont change, and shouldnt.
    Making email better, as google has done IMO, is more critical than making RSS readers better. Geeks will always want to play with new software, but beyond that, i don’t see many apps and services being vastly better than using email services. Not to mention that these email services themselves will also be providing deeper RSS features and other interactive features basically, which furthers my point at focusing on one interface, not many.

    sull

13. Bradley Twohig
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 6:16 am

    Agreed. But these blog services have trouble scaling their applications! Just think about them trying to scale mail and storage. I just don’t see it in the near term.

14. SamD
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 6:45 am

    What is wrong with using the WebClips feature on the top of your Gmail inbox to alert you of new postings on Blogs. Then click through and read it at source.

15. Peter Cooper
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 7:07 am

    Get ready for the next release of FeedDigest Not just e-mail out, but e-mail in, too. I’ll be in touch with our beta is up, as the next release is just finishing alpha.

16. Dan Coulter
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 7:09 am

    It wouldn’t be very hard to write this functionality as a plugin for WordPress (or other hosted blog systems). Is there really a reason to use someone else’s service if you can install plugins and your server has mail capabilities?

17. Peter Cooper
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 7:20 am

    Oh, and we let you entirely rewrite the whole content of the e-mail (unless you’re a free user).

18. Jon Smirl
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 7:29 am

    I’m in the blogs by email camp. I don’t want to waste time checking another app for new posts. By combining with email I only need to check a single app. Plus I get to search and filter the entries using gmail.

    Generating outgoing email for each subscriber is probably a comparable load to responding to all of their pings when nothing is new.

    It would be even better if comments came by email too as a thread under the main topic.

    If you think about it, a blog really is a private email list where only the owner can generate topics and all of the comments are threaded off from the main topic. The email list archive is equivalent to the blog web site.

19. Jon Smirl
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 7:35 am

    As for Google WebClips, it is completely annoying and I turned it off the first day. WebClips alternates content and ads in the same spot in the UI. That forces me to waste attention deciding if I am looking at an ad or a new post. I am unwilling to waste the time sorting this out.

    A much better UI would be to make each blog look like a folder (in a new section called blogs). When you open the blog folder each topic is listed. Open the topic and all of the comments appear. Add your ads on the right like gmail.

20. Simon
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 8:31 am

    I’m also a big believer in RSS to Email for now. My thinking is that Email isn’t going anywhere and email applications will probably always be “ahead” of RSS apps. I’m an Outlook user and very happy with its filtering ability.

    My feeds don’t clutter up my Inbox at all; instead, they’re automatically sorted, flagged, etc. right when they come in.

    Squeet’s management console looks pretty good, and the OPML import should make it easy to try — I’m going to give it a shot.

21. Spence Hackney
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 9:00 am

    You may want to have a look at http://www.rssfwd.com/. I use them at http://www.digitaldevotion.org and it works like a champ.

22. Clyde Smith
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 9:39 am

    I’ll have to agree that the standard FeedBlitz email is fairly ugly. It says a lot that more than one person is deciding not to use that service largely or partly because of that.

    On the newsreader vs. email tip, I actually use both depending on the product. I’m gradually moving more to a newsreader, ok, two newreaders but, generally speaking, delivering my content is about reaching my readers however they want it, wherever they want it.

    But I need good tools to make that possible. I’ve got some. I want more!

23. Pascal Van Hecke
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 9:49 am

    If you want full control over this service, you better install it yourself on your server.
    PHPlist is een open source distribution list manager: see phplist.com.
    I documented the setup of phplist to send daily rss items (weekly or monthly, depending on the users) at http://docs.phplist.com/PHPlistRssConceptualSetup

24. William
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 9:52 am

    There are a great many services that manage to integrate blogging, email, and rss all into one neat little package. Probably my favorite is Near-Time (http://www.near-time.net) - They allow for outbound email notifications on new articles/pages, updates, etc. Very clean, and easy to keep up with emails. They also allow for inbound email (i.e: email sent to a particular address will be automatically posted in your near-time blog/wiki.) Good stuff, I am able to both keep up on near-time sites and publish my own, all without ever having to actually go to the site.

25. Branden
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 9:53 am

    Feedblitz seemed to be the best I could find (feedburner integration is a bonus).

    With the paid version I don’t get the heavy orange branding Mike speaks of, but I’ve always wanted more in relation to the frequency. I want a console that allows me to do scheduling. More importantly, I want to check off which articles to include in the mailout. Email fatigue sets in quickly and blasting off every single post is a sure fire way to keep your churn rate high.

    The other question I keep asking myself is deliverability. I know how hard traditional mail vendors (ie. verticalresponse, constant contact) work to keep their IPs whitelisted and that’s with paying customers who need to take time and effort to pull together a mailout. One has to wonder how many of the emails from Feedblitz and other rss blast services are actually being delivered? Peter - any numbers to report on this? Isn’t keeping your IP whitelisted sucking your day dry?

26. Mike D.
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 10:20 am

    Are there no WordPress extensions that allow for this? In Movable Type, you just plug in “MT-Notifier” and you’ve got your e-mail subscription stuff all set up in about one minute.

27. Phil Hollows
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 10:49 am

    Mike:

    Please address comment #4.

    [snip]

    “But you ask for:
    *zero service provider branding on emails
    * I am in control of the email list; no spamming by the service provider
    * options on frequency of emails
    * options on email template

    You say you’re willing to pay for them and FeedBlitz offers all that for a fee and would allow you to get rid of the orange branding and send newsletters separately. So are you penalizing FeedBlitz for not giving you that stuff for free?”

    [snip]

    It’s a reasonable question. You say you’re prepared to pay.

    Go on then.

    Phil

28. Dorai Thodla
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 10:50 am

    Why don’t you try InfoMinder?

    It not only syndicates blogs but also marks all changes on the page. You can receive the changes as an RSS feed. You can track both blogs and web pages.

    Sorry for the shameless plug, but thought it may be something you want to take a look at.

    – Dorai

29. Dave Hodson
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 10:54 am

    Mike

    Take a look at http://signup.alerts.msn.com

    We’ve been doing what you want for quite a while. Answer a few questions, point us to your feed and that’s it.

    Dave

30. Michael Arrington
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 11:08 am

    #28 - Phil, as far as I can tell there is no way to remove feedblitz branding and links from the email, even with the premium version. Is that incorrect?

31. bjtitus
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 11:26 am

    I checked out Squeet and they had a promotion section which seemed decent to me. Is it new, or do you not find it satisfying for some reason?

    I think I might put this on my blog after I’m done with the renovation.

32. Phil Hollows
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 12:24 pm

    If you customize the emails there’s a teeny weeny logo in the footer at the moment (try signing up and seeing a practical example at http://www.universetoday.com where FeedBlitz serves over 30,000 readers using a combination of Pro and Turbo services).

    One of the hallmarks of FeedBlitz is how we’ve evolved the service to meet the needs of our publishers, that’s why we’re both the number 1 and the fastest growing RSS to email provider. I’d welcome the chance to work with you rather than having a public debate about our use of orange. You’ll have mail in a few minutes.

    Phil

33. Michael Arrington
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 12:27 pm

    Phil, can I take the email list with me with no hassles if I stop using the service?

    I am signing up for the newsletter above.

34. tim
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

    http://www.campaignmonitor.com/

    I suggest you take a look at campaign monitor and plug them in place of constant contact.

35. Real
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 3:18 pm

    yea, thats serious, there really should be email

36. Scott
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 9:21 pm

    Don’t tell too many people about Squeet. It’s a far superior service to RssFwd and we wouldn’t want the masses to come in and ruin everything. You guys can stick with RssFwd though. No problems.

37. Shannon Whitley
    

    February 14th, 2006 at 11:58 pm

    Give Feedlinx a try at http://www.feedlinx.com

    This is a new service, but there is a lot of potential.

    One of the problems with emailing feeds is that you eventually go back to your feed reader and have to remember which posts you’ve already seen. Feedlinx tracks what’s already been sent to your email address and marks it read. It tracks “read” posts across machines, feed readers, and now email.

38. Phil
    

    February 15th, 2006 at 8:53 am

    One really bad thing about FeedBlitz from a user perspective is the fact that they share the user’s email with all the publishers for the feeds the user subscribes to. That is a major privacy violation! If I subscribe to 20 feeds, that’s 20 publishers that get my email.

    I looked at Squeet.com and they specifically say in their privacy policy that they do not share emails with publishers.

39. Clyde Smith
    

    February 15th, 2006 at 11:32 pm

    Re: comment 42 from Phil

    Actually, FeedBlitz users can sign up anonymously. Of course, traditionally when you register for an email newsletter the publisher has your email.

    I don’t get the privacy violation but, as I said, you can register anonymously.

40. Shannon Whitley
    

    February 17th, 2006 at 7:17 am

    Feedlinx (http://www.feedlinx.com/publisher) has a new interface for publishers. It’s VERY new, so suggestions are definitely welcome. Changes are implemented very quickly so you could have a direct impact on the future of the service.

    Since Feedlinx emails are direct representations of your feed, you control what the users see. You can view your subscriber list and also make it simple for your readers to signup. Emails are sent out every 15 minutes in an individual fashion, just like a feed reader.

    This service is for bloggers who would rather spend their time blogging, not managing subscription lists. You control the content because you control your feed. There’s a little bit of branding at the bottom, but that also serves the purpose of allowing the subscriber to go to Feedlinx with service issues instead of the blogger.

41. Patrick
    

    February 21st, 2006 at 12:45 pm

    http://www.CommunityServer.org supports email blog subscriptions and other types of email notification.

42. Ken
    

    March 13th, 2006 at 12:06 pm

    aweber.com now is offering the same service.

43. Dom4Biz
    

    April 9th, 2006 at 11:15 pm

    Hello… I think I have what you need for RSS to Email… I have a very large database of subscribers I want to keep in touch with all of my blogs and post… so I found this real cool autoresponder service that does that with no branding etc… This works great because it monitors my blogs and then converts feed to email and then sends it out to my various list… been using it for 2 months now with great results… email me and I will send you a link to the site…

    Great Blog I refer to it often…

    Best,
    dom:)

44. Randy Charles Morin
    

    April 12th, 2006 at 7:15 pm

    Actually, there’s been dozens of email options for a long time.

45. Rustem
    

    November 21st, 2006 at 1:26 am

    PG Email Newsletter software is an effective solution for online business with easy installation & use, free tech support and free trial. We did all the programming for you, you need only to install and use all your talent.
    

46. Karaoke Kev
    

    December 30th, 2006 at 11:47 am

    I’m surprised Google haven’t jumped more onto the RSS/email subscriptions bandwagon. Google Reader excepted they haven’t really made much of an effort. Stick to Feedburner.

    Karaoke Kev
    http://youtubekaraoke.blogspot.com