FeedBurner is introducing their Feed Awareness API (feedburner.com/fb/a/api/awareness). If you have a free account with FeedBurner you can get your feed circulation (number of subscribers), and number of hits on your feed using their REST api.
If you have a pro account you can get item, and resyndication data from the API.
I am wondering why FeedBurner doesn't have a ping API yet? So you can tell them that your feed has updated.
What's FeedBurner?
FeedBurner will host your RSS feed for you and provide lots of value added services, such as stats, ads, splicing links or photos, etc.
Comments
Hello there. We do have a ping service! In fact, we're one of the services listed at ping-o-matic, or you can just ping us directly. Check out http://www.burningdoor.com/feedburner/archives/000478.html We obviously need to do a better job of publicizing this! Eric Lunt CTO, FeedBurner
Eric, Thanks... I must have missed that on the ping-o-matic page.