As you may have heard, this afternoon NewsGator announced that all of their desktop/mobile client applications are now freeware. NetNewsWire (see our review) and FeedDemon are well regarded as the best-in-class for all things RSS in a desktop application..now without a price tag. Loyal fans are cheering that the company has abandoned their “buy the software and get a free subscription” model in favor of different ways of raising revenue (including abandoning all but web forum support options).
These applications were always well worth their shareware/commercial license, and now that is a thing of the past. But is it disruptive?
As FeedDemon developer Nick Bradbury explains, this move is all about the data (aggregate or anonymous data, of course):
We believe that information about what people are reading, emailing, clipping, etc., is valuable enough that we’re willing to trade our consumer RSS readers for it. And the more users we have, the better able we are to calculate relevance and importance.
So this question is for those of you who are already using other web-based RSS readers, such as Bloglines or Google Reader. Does this change the game for you? NewsGator founder Greg Reinacker says: “What we’re working to do is to saturate the market with our clients.” Do they have a chance? Will you consider switching to NewsGator’s desktop client applications now that they’re all free?
In short, with the recent dominance of web-based applications, was the barrier to adoption of desktop RSS clients ever centered around the price…or are there other factors at play? Let’s hear your thoughts on this, web workers.
I just switched to using Apple Mail on the desktop instead of the always open browser window. I’m very happy with the move. That said, I’m not interested in desktop RSS. I like closing the browser window, I like what Google Reader offers me. I like that I can access it on my iPhone via Safari, mark items as read, and be done with them.
All they are doing is trading $$ for your attention data which they will turn around and sell.
They should have done this the day before Google Reader went live – it’s two years to late because things have changed. The action has shifted to the browser, not the desktop app.
Peter
I am/was a paying FeedDemon customer, but I could only use it at home. We are not allowed to install software on our work PCs. I discovered Google Reader about 6 months ago and I will not be switching back. I can read feeds in my browser – no software required – and what I read at work stays read and I don’t see it again at home.
Not a chance I use a desktop RSS reader. There was a time I did do.
Too little too late.
There is still software based RSS readers out there?
The problem for me with desktop software for reading RSS feeds is that there is no simple way of seeing what you’ve read on another computer. When you read feeds from various places — work, home, mobile — the ability to only see new items is essential. When I tried a few different desktop RSS readers none of them supported this the way that google reader does.
Now that search has been added to google reader it is the best RSS tool I’ve ever used.
[...] the huge value the attention data offers us (I can’t wait to learn how to leverage it). Web Worker Daily and R/WW both wonder if this move will change anything in the RSS market, not to mention the [...]
I see a couple of comments along the lines of I have multiple computers/devices and I want to keep my items in sync. Well the products that NewsGator sell are integrated with their NewsGator online service. Other desktop readers offer similar integration such as RSS Bandit.
For me, FeedDemon and NetNewsWire do the job a lot better than Google Reader since I can have all items cached for offline reading, remove feeds I don’t read easily, works well with multiple tabs etc. Whenever Google Reader gets to that level I will likely migrate.
IMHO Google Reader is still more attractive. Runs over SSL and requires no setup. Works on any computer. No installs.
Not to mention it handles several hundred feeds with no issues, delays or sluggishness.
Google Reader is the single most useful application I’ve ever used.
I used NewsGator before Google Reader, but I can access Reader from any PC that has web access, plus my Windows mobile phone when I have a few free moments. Perfect!
Google Reader may not have caching, but for me, there’s no longer any concept of being “offline”. If that was an issue, I might find NewsGator more appealing.
I have been using FeedDemon for years and still love it. Google Reader has improved tremendously over the years and it does integrate better with Gmail than FeedDemon does.
There are still two things FeedDemon does better. One is printing. Printing an article from Reader (not from the site the article came from) is an exercise in frustration. Second is keyword searches. FeedDemon allows you automatically pull out posts that contain keywords you select. So for example, I could subscribe to a generic sports feed and have it only pull out stories about my favorite team or player. Reader does not offer than funstionality at all.