Updated on December 10, 2021
As you may have heard, Google stated some time ago (but wasn’t publicized heavily until recently) that they’ll be deprecating the FeedBurner API on October 20. While the FeedBurner feeds should keep working as-is, the various widgets relying on such (including the one built into the theme for my site, Suffusion) are likely questionable or defunct. Still, in my opinion, this also casts doubt on the long-term future for FeedBurner itself.
Thus, I’ve decided to remove the FeedBurner feed for this site entirely, reverting back to the plain RSS feed. I’ve also swapped Suffusion’s sharing buttons widget for a different plugin (thus the change in the buttons’ appearance), since Suffusion’s widget doesn’t support a plain RSS feed. As usual, the RSS feeds for the site’s individual categories will also stay displayed. I’ll likely delete the FeedBurner feed at some point, as well.
I suppose it’s an indication that even as useful as Google is, there’s still room for alternative services (FeedBurner’s rivals are getting more attention lately), plus the downsides of relying on “the cloud” for everything. Case in point, of course, is Google’s previous announcement to shut down iGoogle, despite that service, as “dated” as a portal page is, still having a fair number of users (but not very profitable for Google, so…).
