NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free!
January 9th, 2008 by gregr
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.
Q&A - details as to upgrades, refunds, etc.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under newsgator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:23 am
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….
January 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
This is great news for many users, but as a user who paid for FeedDemon in the past it doesn’t feel quite right.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Rich - you’re not trading your privacy; you can opt out of all the data collection I mentioned.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Greg this is awesome news. Now people have no excuse not to use the best of breed RSS clients around.
Props to you guys!
January 9th, 2008 at 11:41 am
[…] This is amazingly good news. The Two best feed readers in the world, FeedDemon for Windows and the Awesome NetNewsWire for OS X are now free, as in no charge. I’ve been a fan of NNW since it’s beta release, i’ve been using the Lite version for years. I just downloaded the full featured goodness. They’ve also freed up their iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and HTML Mobile products. And yes, you can turn of syncing. Try them, RSS readers shave time out of your daily blog reading and news gathering. And your blog posting and social bookmarking. […]
January 9th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
[…] case neither of you have seen the news elsewhere, NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free, and that includes […]
January 9th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
So how do you opt out?
Can’t find any related setting in FeedDemon.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
[…] content - you’ll be hearing much more about that in the following weeks and months. Nick and Greg do a great job of explaining this transition so be sure to check that out. Get ‘em while their […]
January 9th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
mnerec - honestly, I’m not sure! If you would post a message in the FeedDemon forum (http://forum.newsgator.com), that would be the quickest way to get an answer.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
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!
January 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
[…] has announced that a bevy of their RSS/Atom clients, including the excellent FeedDemon is now free: FeedDemon […]
January 9th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
[…] why did they release all of these applications for free? As Nick and Greg put it, it’s simply a marketing a move to saturate the market more for their other for-pay […]
January 9th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
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.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
[…] Greg says, 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. […]
January 9th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
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.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
FeedDemon es gratuiro a partir de hoy…
[Inglés] FeedDemon, histórico lector RSS creado por Nick Bradbury y adquirido por NewsGator en mayo de 2005, ha pasado hoy a ser gratuito. Desde que compró este software, NewsGator ha visto como otras aplicaciones ganaban adeptos cada vez más rápi…
January 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
[…] Check it out here […]
January 9th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
[…] FeedDemon 2.6, NetNewsWire 3.1, Inbox 3.0 (beta), and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile 2.0. According to Greg Reinecker, Newsgator’s CTO: Each of these is a pretty major release on its own - tons of new features […]
January 9th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
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.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
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.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
[…] Right, nobody. So let us waste no time sending along a nice, kind-hearted memo from the friendly developers over at NewsGator, the RSS specialists: They’ve gone free! […]
January 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
[…] founder and CTO Greg Reinacker wrote on his blog that the company is focusing on saturating the market with its clients to provide a better market […]
January 9th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
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…
January 9th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
[…] C’e’ anche un’altra ragione “we want to collect “attention” data (actually I like to call this activity data, but everyone el…“. […]
January 9th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
[…] NewsGator has announced new releases for FeedDemon 2.6, NetNewsWire 3.1, Inbox 3.0 (beta), and NewsGator Go! […]
January 9th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
[…] founder and CTO Greg Reinacker wrote on his blog that the company is focusing on saturating the market with its clients to provide a better market […]
January 9th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
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
January 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
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.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
[…] 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 […]
January 9th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Why use it, when there are so many much cooler clients like google reader or the new mindity (www.mindity.com)
greetings
January 9th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
@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.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
[…] Newsgator’s RSS products are free now. […]
January 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Greg. nice work!
I blogged about it here:
link
Great minds think alike :)
Also…. is it possible to share the attention data with 3rd parties?
I’d like to index/crawl it for Spinn3r.
http://spinn3r.com
January 9th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
[…] 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. Source: NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free! - Greg Reinacker’s Weblog - Musings on just about … […]
January 9th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Brent, Nick, Greg and Jeff on their newly-free desktop feed readers…
Many people prefer to read blogs in a feed reader or “RSS aggregator” rather than making the daily rounds in their Web browser. Today, two of the oldest and most popular desktop clients were released…
January 9th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
[…] now people are going crazy over the fact that NewsGator has released their products for free. I think it is too […]
January 9th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
[…] you may know NewsGator Technologies made their RSS readers free. While these RSS clients are desktop clients they have the ability to synch between multiple […]
January 9th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
NetNewsWire 3.1 is now free…
I’m a big fan of NetNewsWire and love its synchronization ability with NewsGator Online. Imagine my suprise when I open up NNW today and come across NewsGator’s CTO Greg Reinacker’s post that all of NewsGator desktop clients are now f…
January 9th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
[…] Michael Garrett on January 9th, 2008 In a surprising change of plans, RSS company NewsGator has today announced that all of its highly-acclaimed RSS reader clients will be offered free of charge to anyone who […]
January 9th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
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
January 10th, 2008 at 1:15 am
[…] | Rassoc. Más información | […]
January 10th, 2008 at 1:22 am
[…] | Rassoc. Más información | […]
January 10th, 2008 at 3:34 am
[…] NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free! (Vía […]
January 10th, 2008 at 5:06 am
[…] Big news which I may write about later, but you can find out more about from Nick Bradbury or Greg Reinacker’s […]
January 10th, 2008 at 6:39 am
[…] today announced that all of its client RSS reader products are now available free of charge and include free […]
January 10th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Get FeedBeast, it’s better anyway. ;)
January 10th, 2008 at 9:40 am
[…] creator, is reportedly happy about the change, to say the least, and Newsgator isn’t any less thrilled themselves– they say that not only are they excited to spread the love around to everyone, but that […]
January 10th, 2008 at 9:41 am
[…] been using NetNewsWire Lite for ages now and am well-chuffed with my free upgrade to NetNewsWire. If you’re looking for a good RSS reader that syncs across multiple computers, […]
January 10th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
[…] download. Greg Reinacker, the CTO and founder of Newsgator, the company that publishes NetNewsWire, announced the news on his blog. In fact, all the RSS clients that Newsgator develops are now […]
January 10th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Hey Greg, I just blogged about this in the context of social network portability and open access to content:
http://blog.spinn3r.com/2008/01/spinn3r-and-soc.html
January 10th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
FeedDemon is now a FREE download…
NewsGator has announced that they are offering their client software products as free software. This includes FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, Inbox, and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile. Also, the new version of FeedDemon (2.6) has been released.
T…
January 10th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
[…] While catching up on my feeds between diaper changes, I caught the news that NewsGator dropping the price of their client apps to $0. […]
January 10th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
[…] seems like an excellent time to update to NetNewsWire 3.1. Congratulations to Brent, Greg, and Nick. Well done, gentlemen. Posted by Lee Filed in Nifty, […]
January 11th, 2008 at 4:28 am
[…] creator, is reportedly happy about the change, to say the least, and Newsgator isn’t any less thrilled themselves– they say that not only are they excited to spread the love around to everyone, but that […]
January 11th, 2008 at 7:47 am
[…] NewsGator 终于醒悟到，30 美元，在充斥着各种免费桌面及浏览器形式的 Feed 阅读器的市场中显得太伟岸了，所以，决定把个人使用的 FeedDemon 免费提供。实际上这次 NewsGator 是把所有 feed 阅读产品都免费了，包括 Mac 上的 NewsNetWire，移动端的 NewsGator Go!（包括 BlackBerry 的，Windows Mobile 的，Java 的三样都免费）, Outlook 插件。 […]
January 11th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
[…] creator, is reportedly happy about the change, to say the least, and Newsgator isn’t any less thrilled themselves– they say that not only are they excited to spread the love around to everyone, but that […]
January 11th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
[…] and Greg Reinacker are reporting that Newsgator are making their products for individuals […]
January 12th, 2008 at 8:21 am
[…] than iTunes podcast support) and it seems that development on Juice has stopped. The recent announcement that feed demon is now free and supposedly has podcast support means I’ll be trying it out […]
January 12th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
[…] NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free google reader y otros son gratuitos.. les tocaba a ellos ahora […]
January 12th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
[…] One of the reasons Newsgator gives those readers away for free is attention. Newsgator wants to learn which feeds people are interested in and based on that data it wants to improve the clients. Attention data is stored in an APML file which can be exported. Importing an APML file doesn’t work yet, though. […]
January 13th, 2008 at 1:36 am
[…] de pago. Con el acento en era. Porque ya no. Porque hoy mismo se ha anunciado (así da gusto) que los clientes RSS de NewsGator son gratuitos. Una noticia que, por otro lado, se veía venir: si Google Reader y Bloglines son gratis, es […]
January 13th, 2008 at 2:13 am
[…] de pago. Con el acento en era. Porque ya no. Porque hoy mismo se ha anunciado (as da gusto) que los clientes RSS de NewsGator son gratuitos. Una noticia que, por otro lado, se vea venir: si Google Reader y Bloglines son gratis, es difcil […]
January 13th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
[…] Bei den Feednutzern gibts ja 2 Kategorien: Einmal die, die das ganze über Onlinedienste wie Google Reader oder Bloglines lesen und einmal die, die Desktopapplikationen bevorzugen. Für die letzteren gibts jetzt ein kleines Geschenk. Die Newsgator RSS-Clients FeedDemon (Windows) und NetNewsWire (Mac OSX) sind jetzt Freeware. […]
January 13th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
[…] out this post by Greg Reinacker on the direction they are […]
January 13th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
[…] GreatNews has been crashing on me recently, I decided it was a good time to give FeedDemon a try. Greg Reinacker just announced that NewsGator Outlook, FeedDemon and all the NewsGator clients are now totally free! The NOT-FREE […]
January 15th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
links for 2008-01-16…
Gefährliche Schiebschaften – 45 Wege gegen Prokrastination … auf Karriere-Bibel
Bei uns hieß das: Verschieberitis.
(tags: gtd prokrastinantion tipps)
Genussblogs.net - alle Genussblogs auf einen Blick
600+ Kanäle zum Thema Genus…
January 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
[…] founder and CTO Greg Reinacker wrote on his blog that the company is focusing on saturating the market with its clients to provide a better […]
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
[…] NewsGator’s RSS clients are now free! - Greg Reinacker’s Weblog - Musings on just about … Labels: tips # posted by Martijn Plijnaer : 11:46 Comments: Post a Comment […]
February 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
[…] me from these ideas, but just over a month later NetNewsWire is indeed freeware, along with all of NewsGator’s consumer level RSS clients. Brent and I talked briefly about it1 and I’m happy for him. This move means his software […]
February 14th, 2008 at 9:47 am
[…] Greg Reinacker just announced that NewsGator Outlook, FeedDemon and all the NewsGator clients are now totally free! The NOT-FREE thing about FeedDemon has always been the one point that has stopped me from using it. Sounds like Nick has a new user. […]
February 15th, 2008 at 11:11 am
[…] leaving in its wake a more manageable pile to read through. But a feature request for Nick and Greg: I wish there were an option to configure how it behaves– I want to be able to define which […]
February 18th, 2008 at 11:58 am
[…] desktop applications for reading RSS feeds for both Macs and Windows computers. However, they explained clearly that most of their money is being made from business licenses, so the more individual desktops they […]
February 19th, 2008 at 7:57 am
[…] have announced upgrades to their rss reader product collection and announced that all are also now available for […]
March 17th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
[…] more relevant our pages and widgets become. I thought the guys from Newsgator summed it up well in their own posting on their move to free, “…we want to collect “attention” data …and use it to make everyone’s experience […]