NewsFire, now free

[baseballboy828]

NewsFire, the popular RSS feeder by David Watanabe, is now free (and was recently updated to v1.5). Dave announces his decision and explains it on the NewsFire blog. NewsFire joins NetNewsWire, which recently became free. I find it interesting that Dave is doing this. He states his reasoning as:

So why am I doing this? Call it an experiment to draw people into the fold. Call it temporary insanity. Call it good will. Call it stupidity. I’m never really sure what my motivations are, but this one feels right in my gut. I hope you like it. I sure hope I don’t regret this.

NetNewsWire is owned by NewsGator, a company that makes RSS products. They said that they wanted to draw people to their corporate products. In the end, my guess is that this decision loses money for the developer. Anyway, now we have 3 great, free RSS readers for the mac, NetNewsWire, NewsFire, and the open-source Vienna. I guess this is also good news for all the current NewsFire users. You won't have to pay when v2 comes out.

[J Walk]

I've been trying out NewsFire for a little bit, and I still prefer NetNewsWire. I just seem to like the way things are organised in NetNewsWire.

[baseballboy828]

I switched to NetNewsWire from NewsFire hen it became free. I was contemplating just buying it a few months ago, but I wanted to wait for NewsFire 2. When it became free and NewsFire 2 was not launched, I switched.

[houltmac]

I actually bought a license for NewsFire way back when - never really used it after the first week didn't worked out. Seems kinda pointless all round now.

I can't say that I really understand this move from a business perspective; but I am hoping it works out.

[philbowell]

I liked NewsFire, it used to be my reader of choice. But it's lack of syncing feeds became an issue so I had to drop it. I moved to Google Reader and then onto NNW when it became free, if NewsFire coule add some kind of sync between multiple Mac's then I'd really consider using it. I like it's simplicity and to be honest the way I use NNW now pretty much mirrors the way I was using NewsFire but with the sync thrown in.

[Ginamos]

Hmm, I'm not sure I trust the motives behind David Watanabe's move. It could be his cynical way of dropping development of the product, seeing as he probably no longer makes any sales now NNW is free.

[studioprisoner]

o_O

i'm attached to newsfire, bought it ages ago. and now its free. well at least 2.0 will be free! woo

[Yuiichi]

I actually won NewsFire from TAB with the first contest. I've loved it ever since, and it's basically been running on my Mac since that day, probably a year and a half ago. I'm a complete NewsFire zealot - I love the way it does RSS, it fits with the way I work perfectly. As Gruber pointed out, it does offer a different ("very slick, very simple") take on feed reading.

That said, I do wish there was a way to pay David for his work on NewsFire 2 when it comes out. I'd surely pay for a license, if they were still being offered as a paid item.

From a business standpoint, I don't really think he had much of a choice. While there are still people like me who would pay for updates, I think that the bulk of new purchasers would be swayed by the mighty force that is free NNW. And even though he's going to be making even less money from sales (since there aren't any sales), thats not saying that there aren't going to be other forms of monetization in the future. Off the top of my head, there could be ads on the NewsFire site itself (for when people download the software) or even small ads at the bottom of certain stories.

I'm really glad that David decided to do this and I wish him the best with future releases. I can't wait to see what's in store for version 2.

And let this be your chance to try out what I think is the best RSS reading experience out there. It might not offer the raw features that NNW does, but it seems to work better, in my mind.

[houltmac]

@Yuiichi: My point, as Ginamos mentioned more explicitly, is that this isn't so much a business decision (as we are seeing now anyway), but rather laying down and giving up. Distributing free software costs the developer money. Not making money means no payment for time spent developing, which in the end leads to a dead product. NNW can do this because they are part of a larger organization.

David's issue would be that he can't add ads without it becoming a firestorm. Ads on the site, maybe, but no real money would come of it. Ads in the feed would cause outrage most likely for the sake of the feeds integrity for a start.

I wish I could believe something else but let me just remind you: "Audion got crushed."

[Ginamos]

I got curious as to what the reasons for NNW going free were. Greg Reinacker, founder of NewGator, made these two points in his blog;

"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."

I can't imagine that the first point would be something that really applies to David Watanabe's business. Attention data would potentially be an area where money could be made, however privacy issues would make that difficult. I can't see how ads could be incorporated into the product, without having a whole lot of issues and losing a significant amount of the user base.

Overall I can't see a viable way the product can generate enough income to make it worth Watanabe spending time developing it. The only hope is that he sees it as a "loss leader", that helps raise the profile of his other products, but then Inquisitor already does that.