Recovery Update

Hi All:

The problems last week were resolved and FeedBlitz was back up and running by 11:30 on the morning of the 21st; sorry for the inconvenience the resulting delays caused. We have subsequently reached everyone who we know wrote in or was otherwise affected, so everyone should now be all set. It took us a while to get to you all because as well as travel schedules getting in the way, FeedBlitz sends us lengthy alert emails whenever there's a problem. This helps diagnose issues and expedite fixes, but last week it sent over 150,000 when the database lost its way. Working through that many messages just takes. a . very. long. time.

   

Database Down

So I'm traveling, check in this morning and find the database is down. It looks like it failed yesterday some time and isn't recovering because, in failing, it appears to have mangled something important. We're working full steam to get the system back. More news as and when.

   

Sponsorships Call for Betas

We're looking for some premium publishers who want to try to monetize their mailing lists by selling targeted advertising into their content, but who want to control who places ads on their newsletters and how much they pay.

Sponsorships, in other words.

The beta is for pulbishers who want to serve sponsorships into their newsletters, using FeedBitz's email ad server to serve, track and report their sponsorships. Volunteer by mailing me at phil @ you-know-where dot com if you're interested.

   

MSN and Yahoo! Messenger added to IM support

FeedBlitz has now extended its IM support to include beta support for the Yahoo and Microsoft MSN messenger instant messaging services. These new capabilities join our existing integrations with Skype and AIM, enabling publishers to reach the widest possible audience for their newsletters with no extra effort.

Subscribers can choose Y! and MSN from the newsletter subscription page, or may interact with the chat bots by adding the following names to their buddy lists and sending the "?" command:

Skype: FeedBlitz.Alerts
Yahoo!: FeedBlitz.Alerts
MSN: FeedBlitz.Alerts@hotmail.com
AIM: FeedBlitzAlerts

   

Back to full strength - and then some.

This evening we spun up a new server to take up the load of the one that died yesterday. It's a beefy beast and more than makes up for the other one. Mailings will be much more sprightly from now on. Moreover, another one is being brought online in the next couple of days so we will have plenty of excess capacity.

   

If you can't reach feedblitz this morning...

... one of our servers is down and apparently doesn't want to recover. Bad server, bad. We've updated DNS to point to a happy box, but if going to http://www.feedblitz.com/ doesn't work for you right now then please go to directly to www3.feedblitz.com instead for now. Mailings are under way; just a little slower than usual.

   

Audio Interview at Web2Center

Tom Deeter, a social media marketing consultant with NetSmart Media and a frequent contributor to Web2Center.com, interviewed me recently and has posted the audio file at http://www.web2center.com/lead-story/audio-interview-with-phil-hollows-ceo-of-feedblitz/ The interview's nicely bite-sized at just over 18 minutes long.

Please do check it out and subscribe. Thank you, Tom!

   

Feature update: New Subscriber Demographic Data Capture Options

Capturing subscriber data is a great way to learn more about your readers and, if you wish, segment your lists and market to them very precisely. FeedBlitz data capture has now been extended to allow users to pick a value from a list, instead of having to type everything freehand.

So now you can specify the "Gender" custom field, and specify that it has two values to show to the user, "Male" and "Female". You can also specify that the FeedBlitz database should store these values as (say) "M" and "F" so that when you export subscriber data, you get the subscriber's response the way your reporting or CRM system expects.

Custom subscriber data capture, a.k.a. custom fields or demographics, is set up and managed from your Newsletter Center. Click the "Custom subscriber data" link or the icon shown here.

   

Intermittent link issues fixed

We have had some reports of some links not going through properly; it's now fixed. All links will now work as expected.

   

New Feature: Report Export

FeedBlitz has extended its reporting pages to include export options. The export produces text files for you to import into the system or product of your choice, such as a spreadsheet for reporting and further analytics.

If you use FeedBlitz to define custom subscriber demographic data capture (try saying that 3 times in a row), the export includes the subscriber registration data as well (where applicable). This allows you to link a subscriber ID on FeedBlitz with, say, their ID on your CRM system (such as salesforce.com) or contact manager, for more in-depth activity tracking.

If you want to know more about your subscribers, you can explore subscriber demographics in your Newsletter Center.

   

Active Circulation Passes 5 Million

FeedBlitz passed this milestone this morning. Thank you, everyone!

   

January 2008 Monthly Update

During January we focused on performance, scale and serving our growing customer base better. Does this matter? You bet. Because FeedBlitz now delivers email newsletters on behalf of 52,335 active publishers (up nearly 5% on December), and our largest list now has over 330,000 subscribers. Whether you're a small blogger or a corporate email marketer, FeedBlitz continues to get the job done.

Our focus on scalability this month has made a difference. Despite the growth, out nightly runs are now finishing much earlier than they were at the New Year, and our manual "on demand" mailings are now going out significantly faster than they were at the start of the Year. Even as we continue to add thousands of publishers a month, we will always strive to serve everyone well.

So to the monthly metrics:

Total circulation: 4,930,618, up 9.8% (or nearly 440,000!) on December 2007.
Messages sent: 41,817,504 (up 5.7%)
Average messages / day: 1,348,952
Busiest Day: 2,043,583 messages (Jan 29)
FeedBlitz.com page views: 1,962,031 (up 15% on December)
FeedBlitz.com visitors: 731,810 (up 10.6%)