'Hackathons' keep FeedBurner on innovation cutting edge
Dick Costolo, 43, co-founder and chief executive of FeedBurner, which was launched in February 2004, said the company rolls out new features "every six weeks by allowing our development team to innovate on the production service without erecting a lot of process barriers to speed of innovation. We also conduct regular hackathons where the engineering team knocks out a bunch of services in one day."
FeedBurner provides a suite of Web-based services to help publishers -- from one-person operations on up to major media companies -- with tools to manage all aspects of content syndication via blogs -- online journals -- and podcasts -- online audio or video broadcasts that are downloaded to computers and MP3 players such as iPods.
The services simplify the tracking of circulation and delivering content to the right place in the right format.
Advertisers use FeedBurner to buy space in the new media, providing a new revenue stream for the content creators.
The stunning innovative support for online publishers has earned FeedBurner a 2006 Chicago Innovation Award. FeedBurner was in the right place at the right time with the right technology: FeedBurners' customers include 257,000 bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers, up threefold from a year ago.
Some of its customers are Reuters, USA Today, Newsweek, Wired, Fast Company, Inc., Geffen Records, CNET UK, IDG publications (CIO, PC World, Computerworld, Mac World), Ziff Davis publications (PC Mag, eWeek), Smartmoney, Marriott, Amazon (podcast), Yahoo! (corporate blogs), eBay (corporate blogs), Castrol Syntec, Christian Science Monitor, Crain's, and Indy500.
The company, which doesn't disclose revenues, has grown to 28 employees today from 16 a year ago. Costolo and three other consultants, Steve Olechowski, Eric Lunt and Matt Shobe, left Andersen Consulting in Chicago in 1996 to start Digital Knowledge Assets, a maker of software that enabled users to publish and share their thoughts on the Internet.
The software foreshadowed today's blogging craze. They sold the start-up in 1998 and now, with FeedBurner, are on their third new company. Costolo said innovation is important, but so is hard work and customer relations:
"We pride ourselves on speed of innovation and proximity to the customer. Everybody in the company works on customer support, from the CEO to the finance team to the newest designer."