*Sniff* Our Startup Is All Grown Up

By Chris Karr in Miscellaneous on Jul 17, 2006 2:33PM

Chicagoist can't help but be a little proud when one of our hometown own grows up and takes a step towards being a self-sufficient, independent adult out in the real world.

No, little Johnny did not get his driver's license, nor did little Buffy have her sweet sixteen (complete with an authentic rap-star). Instead, one of our own hometown tech startups took a big step toward becoming a real grown up company by devouring another.

Despite ValleyWag's (Silicon Valley's version of Star Magazine) speculations that FeedBurner was planning on acquiring Nooked, Crain's reports that the hors d'oeuvre was in fact a North Carolina company called Blogbeat.

So what does all of this mean? FeedBurner, a company who practices a lot of different mojos over many RSS feeds, bought out Blogbeat, a company who tells you who's reading what (and how often) on your blog. For the TLA (Three Letter Acronym) adverse, one blog technology company bought another. For readers of blogs, this doesn't mean very much, but for publishers of blogs (like your friendly neighborhood Chicagoist), this creates another tool that we can use to keep an eye on all of you readers (in aggregate, of course).

So, we now bid farewell to Chicago-based FeedBurner and welcome in Chicago-headquartered FeedBurner. We hope that the new overlords in the corporate office in their perches in the Windy City remember where they came from and remember the plight of the poor working men in North Carolina.

Image credit: i-pets.com blog

Disclosure: Chicagoist editor Rachelle Bowden is an employee at FeedBurner. She had nothing to do with the writing of this post and didn't even contribute one red Skittle.