A lot of people have been freaking out about Feedburner lately. There is no need to freak. Chill, please. Or as Samuel L. Jackson so eloquently put it, “B*$%h, be cool!” Here’s what’s really going on:

1) The Feedburner API is being shut down on October 20, not Feedburner itself. API stands for Application Programming Interface. If you are not a programmer, you are probably still confused as hell. All this means if you wrote software that uses the API to talk to Feedburner, your software won’t work after October 20. That’s it. Feedburner itself still works. Let me repeat this, Feeburner is NOT shutting down on October 20.

2) On Friday, September 20, a bug was introduced that makes it look like you have 0 subscribers to your feed. This is a bug. You still have all of your subscribers. They’re working on fixing it. If you’re subscribed to anyone’s Feedburner feed via email, you should still be getting post notifications. I got one from a feed this morning. I don’t know when this bug will be fixed, but the Feedburner team is aware of it and they’re working on it. That said, when the bug is fixed it would be a good idea to download your subscriber list, just in case.

3) If Google ever does shut down Feedburner, they will give you plenty of advance notice. When they shut down Google Video they gave people months and months to transfer their videos elsewhere. If they do shut down Feedburner without notice, I will personally lead the protest march to their headquarters, ok? It’ll be a Bring Your Own Torch event.

Now, the fact that Feedburner is shutting down their API isn’t exactly a sign of confidence. So, I wouldn’t blame anyone if they want to switch to another service. There are several alternatives and it’s easy to redirect your feed from Feedburner, but that’s a whole ‘nother post. Until Feedburner makes some sort of official announcement, please stop freaking out.