NewsGator Online, one of the first online RSS readers I used back in the day, is being tossed in the deadpool by its parent company in a move that signals its newfound focus on desktop applications and social computing tools for businesses.
Users of the online feed reader are kindly requested to migrate their subscriptions over to Google Reader before August 31, and NewsGator will provide step-by-step instructions and in-product reminders to make sure all goes smoothly.
Speaking of NewsGator’s desktop RSS readers, which include FeedDemon for Windows and NetNewsWire for Macs, they have both been updated to a new version. Users of the software programs are asked to download the updated versions in the next 30 days, and in another testament to the company’s friendly relationship with Mountain View it is mostly touting the new synchronization feature with Google Reader as a selling point. The programs are offered free of charge, but that hasn’t always been the case; in fact they announced they would be waiving the cost of the products in January 2008.
NewsGator’s focus on its paying, enterprise-grade products makes a lot of sense. just yesterday, the company released an announcement about the momentum for its enterprise social networking product Social Sites, which recently hit the milestone of 1 million paying users. Earlier this year, we published an interesting interview conducted with JB Holston, Newsgator’s CEO, in which he explains their focus on enterprise RSS even if they never call it that themselves.
NewsGator has raised $39 million to date , mostly from Mobius Venture Capital and Masthead Venture Partners.
A surprising testament to the continued value of building on Microsoft’s platforms (SharePoint in this case). Just when I start forgetting businesses still use that stuff rather than free webapps, a story like this reminds ya.
yeah u r right Mr
How do you figure? More of a testament that Google’s web app is kicking NewsGator’s behind.
The fact that they have over a million paying customers on their SharePoint app, jd.
wow……is this becoming a fad. i have heard of die and go to heaven or hell but to die and go to google? this officially makes google the morgue for deadpool startups. scary. maybe its a good thing and means that there’s still life after death. is googl becoming a heaven or haven for deadpooled startups?
I used NewsGator’s online version for a few years. Worked great, was fast and was nice to just have to go to one place online with my cell, laptop or desktop. No syncing. I hope something good works out for the employees at NewsGator. They were great to work with.
Damn…I used this everyday on my blackberry. I liked that you could download most, if not all, of the blog post when you had service and then I would read it when I was in the subway. Does anyone have another mobile RSS reader that does this? That is, one that can store the blog posts (ideally the full post) and then you can read it at your leisure? Thanks!
MyLocator ™, NewsGator is NOT dying — not by any stretch of the imagination. FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, NetNewsWire for iPhone and all of our other current services (such as Social Sites and our other enterprise products) are still going strong and are NOT being discontinued. The online RSS reader is the *only* piece which we are discontinuing.
Bad move. Feed reading can be done fine in the browser.
I’m actually kind glad. I like NetNewsWire but I wanted something that synced with Google Reader and up until now they have always refused to add that feature since they already had their own.
This is one of my most used iphone apps
The iPhone-optimized Google Reader is excellent.
This kind of sucks. All of these small companies just can’t seem to compete when it is faced to face with a monster like Google haunting their market.
Actually, it sucks, because the company only released a usable version of Newsgator Go! for Blackberry yesterday. Less than 24 hours later, they announce that Newsgator will cease to exist in a month.
Re-read. Newsgator isn’t going anywhere, they did not announce anything like that.
wow… sad. I do liked their product but G reader was getting better and better.
three-pane (RSS) browsing has always been dead, it just reared its head for a few years. might as well just use a bookmark bar.
good..its right
Quite disappointing. It was a multi-daily stop for me, and I’m *not* a GoOgle Reader fan.
I dropped in for a last deletion of feeds and sent them an account deletion request. (There’s no account delete transaction I could find on the website.)
Guess I’ll look for something like Sage…or fall back on Netvibes or MacOSX Mail or widgets on my Yahoo! page. Yawn. (There’s always Techmeme and memeorandum.)
Warning – the upgrade version wipes out all Clippings – the Clippings folder (and subfolder) goes away in the new version…. all URLs go away
I used Newsgator waaaaaaaaay back in the day. They missed their window to cash in few years ago. Feedburner cashed in. Feeds are something we all use, but just don’t make money. Also, the mainstream never was able to understand or appreciate RSS. Everyone was waiting and think it’s time has passed.
Not such bad news – the online reader wasn’t great.
But are the new versions of the desktop clients ad-supported? I know the latest FeedDemon is/was…
What’s really appalling is the way Newsgator / FeedDemon / Nick Bradbury are dumping on their previous customers.
I paid for an earlier version of FeedDemon because I thought, at the time, it was the best offering.
And now, because I’m an “individual” as opposed to “big corporate” I’m getting shafted.
That’s really good marketing. Not.
Hey folk, come spend money with us. But we won’t mention what happened to previous customers who did that.
For some strange reason Nick Bradbury isn’t answering the awkward questions. But I guess he sold out a long time ago.
And if you want to be even further horrified:
> A pre-release of FeedDemon 3.0 which syncs with Google Reader has been available for several months, and while there are still a few kinks to work out,
So we are being bounced into using something that still doesn’t work properly yet.
Steve@cdlcreative, didn’t you buy your license like *years* ago? I guess when I bought mine from the one-person Bradsoft long ago I didn’t expect he’d be beholden to me for the rest of time.
I kinda stopped using FeedDemon a while ago. But I’m going to really miss newsgator’s iPhone webapp. I like it better than Google Reader on the iPhone, and the NNW iPhone app.
Andrew.
No. Actually I bought my licence from Newsgator.
My complaint (and it’s not only me) is that they’ve shafted their customers. Instead of offering us a (paid for) upgrade path we are now toast.
And what they’ve really missed in their desperate attempt to re-pitch their offerings at the big corporates is:
I happen to work for a big corporate. Am I going to let a company that is so cavalier towards its previous customers anywhere near us.
I don’t think so.
I’m fully aware that Bradsoft and Newsgator are not the same thing. But I’m deeply unimpressed with Nick trying to spin this as a great improvement while not answering any of the criticism.