Google Bought Feedburner

Although this news is 3 months old and I cannot believe I missed this out, I am compelled to post this to marvel at the power of enterpreneurship.

Yes, Google bought FeedBurner for speculated $100 million. But the story I wanted to highlight here is not focusing on Google, but rather on FeedBurner. Barely after 3 years since it was started, it had reached a level of recognition enough to grab Google's attention.

So, I do believe in great innovation. And I do believe when you create something great, it will not take too long before people start to recognize the potential of the product.

FeedBurner, founded by four serial entrepreneurs in February 2004, has been on the leading edge of a second-wave Internet boom with the popularity of blogs, commercial newsfeeds and podcasts. FeedBurner developed tools to enable writers, publishers and broadcasters to capitalize on the boom with advertising, tapping the power of RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, a technology standard for publishing regular updates to Web-based content.

FeedBurner provides a suite of Web-based services to help publishers -- from one-person operations on up to major media companies -- with tools to manage all aspects of content syndication via blogs and podcasts. The services simplify the tracking of circulation and delivering content to the right place in the right format. Advertisers use FeedBurner to buy space in the new media, providing a new revenue stream for the content creators.

FeedBurner's customers -- 431,171 publishers as of Wednesday -- include Reuters, USA Today, Newsweek, Wired, Fast Company, Inc., Geffen Records, CNET UK, IDG publications (CIO, PC World, Computerworld, Mac World), Ziff Davis publications (PC magazine, eWeek), Smartmoney, Marriott, Amazon (podcast), Yahoo! (corporate blogs), eBay (corporate blogs), Castrol Syntec, Christian Science Monitor and Indy500.

Costolo and three other consultants -- Steve Olechowski, Eric Lunt and Matt Shobe -- left Andersen Consulting in Chicago in 1996 to start Digital Knowledge Assets, a maker of software that enabled users to publish and share their thoughts on the Internet. The software foreshadowed today's blogging craze. They sold the startup in 1998. FeedBurner was their third company.

Like Google, FeedBurner is known for its innovation and playful spirit. Costolo said in an interview last year the company knocks out new features every six weeks. "We also conduct regular hackathons where the engineering team knocks out a bunch of services in one day," he said.

This is what I hope for when we started Agile Methodology in our company. We are making progress but still need a lot of effort to build the culture to promote innovation and playful spirit. I guess I cannot see these days since I am leaving.

This is the announcement made by FeedBurner on their website:
http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/06/feedburner_google.php