It’s a match made in heaven. I like analytics. I like RSS. Therefore, I like Feedburner.
Apparently I’m not the only one, as Union Square Ventures has just invested in Feedburner. PaidContent scooped them on their own investment as Fred notes there. Seems like a smart deal to me, they’re the leader in the feed space, and who isn’t predicting RSS to keep growing? Feedburner is the leader in feed management, and there are numerous monetization opportunties in charging for analytics (which they do), charging for feed management (not as easy), having the leading feed advertising network (they have the network, not sure if they lead), and becoming the Comscore-like metrics tracker.
There is a lot of opportunity there, seems like a no-brainer to me to invest. I’m guessing the money is to help them grow and bridge that gap from promising company to full-fledged revenue generator. They also may be an acquisition target now or in the near future. Either by a web analytics company (WebSideStory? Omniture? Webtrends?), or one of the big players. While I think it’s going to get harder and harder for Web 2.0 companies to get acquired, Feedburner is one that seems likely to me at some point.
UPDATE: Bad information just deleted, never post late at night.
UPDATE: Union Square Ventures has posted their reasonings on why they invested in Feedburner. Looks like my guesses were pretty close.