FeedBlitz Deploys Improved Subscription Architecture

Yesterday a new subscription architecture was put in place in the FeedBlitz service. The major element of change is more detailed tracking of subscription and removal requests in the database. The benefits of this updated approach are:

• Preventing accidental resubscription of unsubscribed users by a subscriber import.
• Stopping OPML subscribers from being resubscribed to a feed referenced in the OPML file which they previously unsubscribed from.
• Enabling future feature enhancements, including subscription activity reporting.
• Subscriber management behavior more consistent with industry standards.

The only place where current users will notice the change is when an existing FeedBlitz user subscribes to a new feed using a signup form on a web site. Previously, no confirmation email was generated in this scenario; one is now. Users who are logged in and use the dashboard to add a subscription directly will not have to confirm, since they are already authenticated. Additionally, premium publishers using the import facility will not be able to import unsubscribed users; these addresses will instead be listed as suppressed in the import summary.

Finally, the only way a user who has globally unsubscribed (or been administratively deleted for whatever reason) can start to receive emails again is to re-register themselves; they will not be allowed to subscribe using any other mechanism until they are confirmed back into the system.