While catching up on my feeds between diaper changes, I caught the news that NewsGator dropping the price of their client apps to $0.
According to the announcement, it’s a ubiquity play. Be everywhere, while focusing revenue-generation efforts on the server side by incorporating (and selling?) “attention” or activity data1. Congrats to them to be able to make that move.
NetNewsWire was my primary feed reader for years, but about a year ago, we stopped getting along. I wanted more than straight feed aggregation and reading.
Aggregation, like water, is everywhere – it’s easy to do. Ping a handful of feeds and present them together. Cheap, easy. It only gets interesting and valuable when there’s something more happening. Filtering, sorting, discovery, integration, sharing are just a few of the places where there’s work to be done.
And money to be made.
Again, think about all the places in your home that dispense water and the corresponding price tag.
1. Personally, I’ve yet to be sold on the usefulness of attention data in general and APML specifically. I’m looking for compelling examples of it though – if you have some, please share. Thanks.