NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free!

We’ve got a lot of big news today at NewsGator.

First, we’ve got new releases of our most popular applications: FeedDemon 2.6, NetNewsWire 3.1, Inbox 3.0 (beta), and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile 2.0. Each of these is a pretty major release on its own – tons of new features in all of them.

But second, every one of those applications is now free! Free as in beer, that is. And add to the free list NewsGator Go! for BlackBerry as well. And not only are they free, but our online services (including synchronization) are now free as well! Not to mention our iPhone reader, HTML mobile reader, and all of the other applications that are part of our online platform.

I haven’t been this excited about our consumer products and strategy since we bought FeedDemon and NetNewsWire a couple of years ago.

But I can hear you asking already…”why, Greg, why would you do such a thing?”

What we’re working to do is to saturate the market with our clients. Anyone who wants a rich experience for consuming content, or anyone who uses multiple computers or devices and wants a best-of-breed experience on each can now use our clients. Using a Mac at home, along with an iPhone? NetNewsWire and our iPhone reader will sync up. Have a PC at the office? FeedDemon will sync with your other two applications. And they’ll all sync with NewsGator Online. It all just works.

There are two reasons we want our clients to become ubiquitous. Well, three if you count “we want to be nice.” But two other reasons. :-)

First, we’ve found that when we go into an enterprise to sell NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) and Social Sites, there are already a ton of people using one of our desktop apps already. The more folks are already using them, the easier it is to sell our server products – especially since these client apps can sync with NGES directly. So, the more the merrier – we’re going to make sure that everyone who wants to use our apps can do so, without having to climb over the hump of having to dig out their credit card.

And second, we want to collect “attention” data (actually I like to call this activity data, but everyone else in the world calls it attention) and use it to make everyone’s experience better. If there is a specific feed you love, and you’re constantly emailing its articles to friends or saving articles in your clippings, that’s interesting…and if there are a lot of people doing this, it’s probably a good indicator about the “relevancy” of that content for other users. Similar with individual articles that are getting a lot of attention from users. Basically, by using your data, in combination with aggregate data from other users, we can deliver a better experience for everyone. And that’s a good thing – both for us and for you.

We’ve taken some small steps along these lines so far in the client applications – watch over the next few months as these capabilities really start to come into their own, and roll out both in the online reader and continue to evolve in the clients.

We’ve talked about APML in the past, and said we’d implement APML export in the clients. We’re going to take that a step further – and implement an endpoint in our online platform where you (and only you!) can always access your personal APML data. That data will be a rollup of all of your activity across all of our clients that you use. We’re also going to make aggregate data available via API. You should start to see all of this start rolling out within the next couple of months.

So anyway – this is great news! I’m personally really excited about this, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you. There are a lot of details I didn’t cover here…so here are a couple of links with more info.

Press release

Q&A – details as to upgrades, refunds, etc.

79 Comments

79 thoughts on “NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free!”

  1. Rich

    So I’m trading my privacy for a free application that I’ve already paid for? Wow. I think I’m going to have to get rid of one of my favorite applications of all time with NetNewswire and stop recommending it to friends. What a pity….

    Reply ↓

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  10. Kae

    Even as someone who has paid for these services in the past, I think this is great news for you an your users. Congratulations!

    Feeling cheated because you paid for something in the past is selfish. All this means is that you supported something you like to the point where it could grow and find another means of income. Good for them!

    Reply ↓

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  13. Brian

    If (when?) an iPhone SDK is released with device storage support, I’d love to see a NewsGator Go! version (or other mobile newsgator app) that saves feeds to the iPhone for offline viewing.

    Reply ↓

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  15. Rich

    Per the FAQ, even though I PAID for a product, to use syncing features, I must give up my privacy. This sounds like some sort of breach of contract. I purchased a product, and now you’re intending to take it away unless I give up my privacy? Please clarify that we will have FULL access to what we purchased without giving up our privacy.

    Reply ↓

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  19. Charlie Anzman

    Greg… this is pretty cool news. Have to wonder just a little if it has to do with the widespread adoption of Goggle Reader this past year. Regardless, best of luck with the new approach.

    Reply ↓
  20. gregr Post author

    Rich – perhaps I didn’t word things well in the FAQ. You don’t have to “give up your privacy” to use any of the features – we’re just trying our best, in the privacy policy and in blog posts and such, to document what kind of data we’re actually collecting, and what we’re going to do with it. It’s very similar, actually, to clickstream data on the web that’s being collected at just about every site you visit.

    Also, I believe some of the clients can sync but at the same time opt out of data collection; I’m not positive about this, but I believe it’s true. The best thing to do would be ask for specifics on the particular client you’re using in the forum at http://forum.newsgator.com. Or, if you’d like to get in touch with me directly, that would be fine as well – my email alias is gregr, and you can guess the .com part.

    Reply ↓

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  23. Rich

    Thanks Greg… I actually block clickstream, doubleclick and most tracking cookies. That’s just the way I ride… :)

    I just expect that the privacy provided in the product I purchased is maintained without loss in functionality. Even though the product is now free and many services and products expect a “trade” in information for a free product, that wasn’t the contract I entered when I purchased the product.

    I’ll follow up with Brent Simmons…

    Reply ↓

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  27. bowerbird

    give that dude his money back and tell him to go away.

    ***

    i’ve been using an older (faster) free version, but
    i will check out this newer (free) version again…

    thanks for your generosity!

    -bowerbird

    Reply ↓
  28. Chris

    Well, thank you!

    I’ve been a happy (paid) user for a couple of years, but this just makes a great product better, and easier to recommend to friends.

    I hope it works out well.

    Reply ↓

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  30. Russel Ridick

    Why use it, when there are so many much cooler clients like google reader or the new mindity (www.mindity.com)
    greetings

    Reply ↓
  31. Nick Bradbury

    @mnerec: FeedDemon has a “Collect attention data” setting in each feed’s properties – just uncheck that if you want to opt-out. Note, though, that this will also remove the feed from “Popular Topics,” since that feature also relies on your attention data.

    Reply ↓

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  40. Ian Kennedy

    Wow Greg, this is really great news. FeedDemon was my first reader way back when but I’ve since drifted off to use various online readers. I guess it’s now time to come out of the cloud and try out the good ol’ client reader once again.

    Ian

    Reply ↓

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