BlogHawk has been an idea kicking around for about a year now. It has gone through at least four complete revisions, with the current being the most simple and straight forward method for tracking the frequency of new articles found within an RSS or ATOM feed.
Back in 2011, we were asked a simple question from one of our clients that was trying to manage 8 corporate blogs: how can I manage where to focus my writers from month to month? We pretty much assumed that the answer began, and pretty much ended with an RSS/ATOM reader that recorded everything into a database and a number of reports that identified trends in post frequency across blogs and writers. So off to our client we went with data in hand to find out just how right we were and how great the data was and how much it is going to help, and how much better it would be if it was able to do a few other things…. and … uh-oh.
At the end of the meeting, we had added 8 new metrics to the reports our client wants to track and a number of other features to add in order to meet the new requirements. So back to the original drawing board. We rewrote our Feed Crawler, added in formulas to track metrics, and added flags for areas of concern. And the result was the very first version of the BlogHawk Feed Crawler, and what was at the time called the Pulse Monitor as it was to provide a graphical heartbeat of your blog’s RSS/ATOM feed.
So where does that leave us today? Well, we are going to begin by opening up the Pulse Monitor to anyone interested in using it. It’s simple to sign up for it, and for as long as our website is up and you provide us with a valid feed, we’ll keep it updated. As for the rest of the features we hinted at, you’ll just have to wait and see. So what are you waiting for? Sign-up and see how your feed is ranking today.