Web Masters

Matt Shobe shares the story of building FeedBurner, a platform for monetizing RSS feeds during the height of RSS's popularity.

Show Notes

Before social media websites became our feeds of information from around the Internet, people relied on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to build their own feeds of content from different websites. While this was a great way for consumers to keep updated on what their favorite sites were producing, it wasn't so great for the sites themselves. Lots of their readers were viewing content through RSS feeds, which meant less site visitors and less money from advertisers.

The FeedBurner team helped solve that problem. FeedBurner allowed websites with continuously updating content (i.e. blogs, news sites, etc.) to monetize on people who subscribed to their sites using RSS.

In this episode of Web Masters, one of FeedBurner's co-founders, Matt Shobe, shares the story of helping build FeedBurner while helping us understand what the Internet was like back when you could "reach the end" of it thanks to your RSS feed.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

What is Web Masters?

Web Masters is an original podcast that explores the history of the Internet through the stories of some of its most important innovators. In each episode, host Aaron Dinin, a serial entrepreneur and digital media scholar, talks with Internet entrepreneurs who created important websites, tools, services, and features. Some are hugely popular, some you’ve never heard of, and all of them have impacted everything you do online. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Internet has enabled -- and continues to create -- some of the greatest business opportunities in history from the people who have proven they know how to build successful Internet businesses.