Happy New Year! Happy New Email Delivery?
When I first started blogging the Law of Mobility nearly two years ago, I thought it was important to have a way for folks to receive an e-mail each day with the previous day’s postings. There are a few folks who I know wouldn’t be reading the Law of Mobility if not for this option, but for the most part my readers use other tools (in December, 34% of you used Netvibes, 31% used Google Feedfetcher, 11% used Bloglines, and the remaining 24% used at least 25 other tools).
But, for those few that really want to receive the Law of Mobility via e-mail, I want to make sure that the experience is positive. Way back when, I selected Feedblitz as the service for e-mail delivery. Over the past 21 months, Feedblitz has changed their service in some ways, none of which I see as positive. I’ve kept an e-mail subscription myself to monitor how well it works and, frankly, the problems with delivery have been increasing. Some days I’ll receive two or more different e-mails with the previous day’s post. Since folks sometimes ask “why did you send me your Law of Mobility message twice yesterday?” I know that this is perceived as me personally overloading folks’ mailboxes. None of us need that. Other days, it never arrives, or it arrives much later than normal (e.g. the afternoon rather than the morning). That’s just not acceptable.
So, I’ve decided to switch my email delivery service to FeedBurner. I already use FeedBurner for tracking readership (e.g. the reader stats I listed above) and I’ve been impressed with the company, its quality and reliability, and the constantly improving set of features. In June of last year, FeedBurner was acquired by Google. I’ve watched to make sure this is a positive for FeedBurner’s services, and it has been. I have confidence that the company is going to stick around, investments in new functionality are at least continuing if not increasing, and Google isn’t forcing the company to radically change direction.
Interestingly, while FeedBlitz lets a blog owner both export current subscribers and import new subscribers using a data file, FeedBurner only lets me export my current subscribers, not import. In general, this is a good thing since it means each of you decide whether you want to receive these e-mails.
However, if you want to change to getting your Law of Mobility through FeedBurner instead of FeedBlitz, it means you need to take a few steps:
- Go to the Law of Mobility web page: http://www.lawofmobility.com
- Find the e-mail subscription box in the sidebar on the right (just below the photo of the Power of Mobility book), and enter your e-mail address.
- After you hit the Subscribe button, a window should pop-up asking you to type in the letters you see to make sure that you’re really a person wanting to receive these e-mails.
- You’ll receive an e-mail with a link asking you to confirm your subscription. Click on the link.
- You’ll also want to unsubscribe from FeedBlitz - in one of your recent Law of Mobility e-mails, click on the link at the top labeled “Unsubscribe safely and securely now”.
- Confirm that you really want to unsubscribe.
That should do it.
I’m not going to take any active steps to shut down the FeedBlitz delivery of e-mails, so if you like FeedBlitz or can’t be bothered to take the above 6 steps, you shouldn’t notice any difference. But I also am not going to take any of the active steps I’ve had to take at times to make sure that folks are successfully receiving their FeedBlitz e-mails.
If you think I’ve made a mistake in pursuing this change, feel free to let me know.
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Now playing: U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday