Chicago-based Feedburner.com, the market-leader in Internet feed management has acquired the North Carolina based blog analytics company Blogbeat.net for undisclosed terms. This assigns BlogBeat’s founder, Jeff Turner to the all new role of lead engineer for Web analytics at FeedBurner.

According to reports, FeedBurner, which syndicates Web postings for 200,000 odd publishers as well as operates a growing Web site advertising network will combine BlogBeat's blog analytic services with FeedBurner's existing free feed management services. Feedburner’s co-Founder Steve Olechowski said that the deal will allow the company to provide publishers with tools to better understand what headline feeds blog site visitors are reading. And to create a comprehensive picture of how content is being distributed and consumed online.

The combination of the two services is set to be completed by the fourth quarter of this year. In the mean time, current BlogBeat customers will continue to be supported with uninterrupted service and will receive full refunds from FeedBurner, stated the company. Fee-based enhanced services will soon commence by 2007.