Toluu

Official ReadBurner Blog

What's Shared on the Web

FRAMED!: What BurnURL is doing to help out Readers AND PublishersApril 11 2009

With all the talk out right now about URL shorteners (especially those that frame content), we thought we’d take just a moment to let you guys in on some of the steps we take to help publishers of content that’s spread through BurnURL (and eventually ReadBurner).

We’ve always been a very publishers focused company (both with Readburner and BurnURL) and we intend to keep it that way.  We, from the very creation of BurnURL, wanted to make sure the focus was on publishers and their content versus on us and we’ve put quite a few steps in place to do that.

One of the changes we recently put live was to remove the Sharebar when we detected the user-agents of Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask (these four account for the largest portions of search traffic).  These crawlers don’t need to see the Sharebar (as they’re not going to interact wtih it), so we don’t need to serve it to them.  Instead we feed them a 301 redirect.  This tells them the URL that was burned is the original content owner and it should be listed in the index on that topic.  Our shortened URL effectively gets ignored.

I’d also to reiterate that being a publisher focused company, we love getting feedback from publishers.  Or even users in general.  We strive with our products to provide a great experience, but if you think there’s something we can do to make it even better- we’re listening.  Feel free to email us or send us a reply

Cool Firefox Add-On : Shorten URLApril 11 2009

We were stoked to see that BurnURL is included in the new Shorten URL Firefox add-on!

Shorten URL from context menu with your selected URL shortener service and display the result in location bar.

Give it a download and Burn some links right from your browser!

Does Digg mean to like or does like mean to Digg? Mood Mining 101.April 4 2009

First off, we want to say thank you to everyone who has really supported the ReadBurner team over the past…wow, year or so now? It has been an awesome ride. We’re just getting started.

We listened to feedback, and we’ve paid attention to the landscape of the web and how we interact with news and information. We saw a lot of problems and gaps there. Ways to maybe do things better, and more efficiently.

You’re getting a glimpse of that today with version 2 of BurnURL.

What happened to “Like”?

We gave you the ability to “Like” things via the BurnURL ShareBar in the first version. But…what does “Like” mean anyways? Does like mean you like it enough to give it a “Like” or does it mean you REALLY like it? Or does it mean, it’s kinda ok, and you don’t hate it?

You have no idea what it means, and neither did we.

Are we competing with Digg?

No. Digg is a whole other animal. See comments on “Like”. What is a Digg? Some people “digg” things to bookmark it for later viewing, or for a small subset of their friends. Some use it to promote things to get it to a homepage. What is a “Digg”? We have no idea.

What’s wit

BurnURL’s Upgraded ShareBarApril 4 2009

After about a month or so of watching people use BurnURL - and more than 20,000 BurnURLs directing more than 200,000 hits - today we’re rolling out a new version of our ShareBar.  We’ve both made the design more efficient, and added a number of features we think you’ll find useful.  Here’s the rundown:

1. Moved Sharing to “Share” Button: After seeing all of the reviews and screenshots of BurnURL, it was clear that we needed to save some space on the ShareBar for those with smaller screen resolutions.  So we consolidated the sharing options – like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg – under the new “Share” button.  This will also give us more room to add additional services – let us know which you’d like to see added.

2. E-Mail Sharing: Under this new “Share” button, there is now an “E-mail” option so you can send stories to people via e-mail.  E-mail sharing is still by far the #1 way people share stuff online, so we thought it would be a good idea to include it with BurnURL.

3. “Tweets” Button: This new button initiates a Twitter search for the URL you’re viewing.  This lets you know who else has tweeted the story, and what they said about it.  This is just the first of a number of ideas we have when it comes to integrating community into the ShareBar.

4. New “Mood Mining” Rating System: One thing we’ve noticed is that with

A Special DayMarch 12 2009

Today has been a very humbling day for us and our BurnURL project.  This morning, we were alerted to the story of Team Winter, an effort setup by Athletes for a Cure to honor the memory of Michael Vinecki. 

Michael passed away this morning from prostate cancer, leaving behind his 9-year-old daughter Winter, who happens to compete in triathlons at her young age.  We caught wind of the story when it was tweeted by Scott Zagarino, using a BurnURL, this morning (we’ve been monitoring all tweets containing BurnURLs since launch for feature ideas, bugs, etc.).

In any event, as I’m writing this, the Team Winter page has been hit nearly 800 times, and retweeted close to 100. Meanwhile, the guestbook setup to leave Winter condolences and best wishes has been signed dozens of times.

We just wanted to share this story, and are thankful any small part we might have been able to play in making the outpouring of support for Winter and her family possible during what is a very difficult time.

_teamrb