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Although this service wasn't very heavily trafficked, it did serve as a point of feed synchronization for several reader platforms. If you're a user of NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, or NetNewsWire for the iPhone, then you will need to follow their Product Transition Instructions [newsgator.com].
They still plan to continue offering the NetNewsWire (Mac), FeedDemon (Windows), and NetNewsWire for the iPhone. That's good news, as they are some of the best stand-alone aggregator/reader software available IMHO.
Why are they shutting down these services? They say that their enterprise level business has really taken off and they want to focus on that.
As is becoming so popular these days, the company did not issue a press release, but rather posted to their blog. For more information:
From NewsGator:
From Nick Bradbury - creator of FeedDemon:
Irony.
One less source of information is one less root for a healthy internet.
In a similar vein, WidgetBox cut back its free offerings a few months ago. If you had a free widget, you could keep it, but for more, you had to pay. I paid and, ya know, it's like $30 or something a year for what amounts to unlimited widgets. Not bad at all, and with paying you get a few more ways to customize.
People are looking for ways to maintain income. Free is not working for them.
Google Reader is rank awful.
It does not display all your RSS headlines, but rather selects which to publish. When I politely complained about this to their RSS bod, he emailed me back claiming this was viewed as "a feature".
We don't even recommend Google Reader to our RSS subscribers.
NewsGator are suggesting users switch to Google Reader as an alternative to NetNewsWire...
One less source of information is one less root for a healthy internet.
A healthy internet requires funding. Especially in the current environment of bandwidth heavy consumption. Usenet may be just as heavy in hardware requirements, but much lighter in bandwidth consumption.
I also suggest that avoiding bias in news requires that the funding be free from advertiser influence.
