Didn't Someone Tell Feedster They Were Dead?

You don’t hear the name “Feedster” very often any more, other than the occasional joke about how they managed to execute even more poorly than Technorati. I frankly assumed they were among the walking dead – the place startups go when they don’t have pressure to shut down but don’t have enough money or human assets to do anything interesting, either. The last time we wrote about them was February 2006, more than a year ago.

But it appears that Feedster is alive and kicking – they launched a major redesign today, and a new widget product that allows searchers to quickly add search results to any website. They also have a new search engine, they say, that helps reduce spam.

It looks like there are a few hiccups with the widget – I created and embedded one but it won’t load properly.

My opinion: When a company gets this sick and falls this far behind, and the market they are in is now dominated by Google, it’s generally a good idea to return what’s left of capital to shareholders and let the employees move on to more interesting projects. Nothing good is going to happen with Feedster. I’m not particularly impressed with their search results (this will not pull users from Technorati or Google Blog Search), and few people will be interested in the widget (not that Technorati releases stuff like this all the time, they just don’t talk about it).