Niall Kennedy, of Technorati, has the news that Google will release a feed API in early 2006.
Here’s another note to Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Ray Ozzie. Hey, I asked you guys to acquire NewsGator three months ago. If you had done that you would have taken the wind out of Google’s sails. But now that Google has a feed API, we’ll need one too and right now NewsGator looks pretty good. Yeah, I know, we have RSS-SSE coming, and we have some Groovy other stuff coming too, but that’s not here yet and it’s hard to get developers excited about a new and unproven API (Google has its work cut out for it too because they don’t have that many RSS users yet. Emphasis on yet).
Yeah, I know that NewsGator has its problems too. Now, we do know that NewsGator’s API is too difficult to use. Why do we know that? Cause Dare Obasanjo (one of our developers who works on MSN Spaces backend and also does the excellent RSS Bandit in his 20% free time) is having troubles figuring it out. Dare writes about the Google news here.
Let’s be honest. We’d rebuild NewsGator from scratch anyway. That’s what big companies usually do after acquiring companies. But, it’s a lot easier to rebuild something that’s already done than have 500 meetings with seven groups figuring out what to do from scratch. What’s the opportunity cost of doing that?
Let’s look at the case for NewsGator again. They own four out of the six most used aggregators. They have the leading Outlook aggregator. Yeah, we’re doing our own in Office 12, but let’s be honest, how long will it be before that gets to more than 50% usage? I’d guess 2010. And even then there are lots of people who’ll still have Outlook 2003, and older Outlook clients, who’ll need to read feeds. Yeah, Attensa is out there with a good competitor too, but Attensa doesn’t have an API. I bet they’ll sign onto Google’s API (or they’ll be bribed with some of Google’s money).
Let’s look at the Mac. NewsGator owns NetNewsWire. It’s the best feed reader on the Mac — by far. Buying NewsGator would rejuvenate our MacBU. The Macintosh is gaining in market share and if Apple announces a nice Intel-based portable computer in January watch things go up even faster.
Now, let’s look at Media Center. A very high percentage of all PCs sold are actually Media Center Editions. Now, who has an aggregator for that? NewsGator again. Why is that important? Well, look at Chris Pirillo’s house. He has an HDTV in his family room. He has an Xbox 360. And he has a Media Center in his office. What was one of the first things he showed me? His Media Center playing on his Xbox’s screen. Now, imagine if NewsGator was pulling down podcasts. If it was going off to the BBC and pulling in pictures and news. If it were going to his Flickr feeds and pulling down his friend’s photos in live time.
Now, switch over to my sooopppeerrr doooopppeeerrr new SmartPhone. Who has an aggregator for that? A few companies, but NewsGator has a Web service that shows me feeds. I like it a lot.
OK, now we are still a company that cares about regular old Windows, right? After all, we’re shipping a new version of Windows next year. So, who has the best aggregator for Windows? NewsGator again. With FeedDemon.
To put a little icing on the cake, NewsGator is the only RSS syndication system that hooks into Microsoft Exchange that I know about.
You’re not on any of these? Well, did you know NewsGator also has a Web client that’s getting raves? I like it better than Bloglines (which is one of the popular feed readers that NewsGator doesn’t own).
Oh, and here’s even more icing: on top of all this NewsGator does blog search and does it better than many of the more popular “blog search” engines. Why? Cause it searches YOUR feeds (which don’t include all the blog spam that hit other engines).
All this stuff is synchronized. Read a feed on your Mac, it marks it as read on Windows, and on SmartPhone, on the Web, on the Media Center, and in Outlook.
Anyway, if you were Bill/Steve/Ray what company would you want to acquire?
For the sake of NNW, just stay away from NewsGator.
For the sake of NNW, just stay away from NewsGator.
[...] Even een cliche: wie gaat het winnen? Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, …? Microsoft gaat wellicht voor Newsgator en is al flink aan de weg aan het timmeren met het Live-concept. Wat Google ook gaat doen (bijvoorbeeld met Google Base): iedereen vindt het ‘evil’. Yahoo heeft nu een veelbelovend begin met Flickr en del.icio.us op hun loonlijst, dus de uitbreidingen en de koppelingen moet weldra gaan komen. eBay gaat Skype waarschijnlijk nog verder integreren in hun diensten en misschien is Meebo in dat opzicht ook wel een goede partij voor ze. En naast al die multinationals is er misschien wel een underdog die het ze verschrikkelijk moeilijk gaat maken het komend jaar. [...]
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[...] A-List Microsoft Bloggers Move to WordPress (AUTOMATTIC) Ok so the headline is a little punchy/paunchy, given two people can’t really be a trend, but I wanted to call out that Kim Cameron, recently named Identity’s God, has moved to WordPress. This follows Scoble’s decision (which to my mind is choosing a great tool for the job rather than hypocrisy) to adopt the nifty open source blogging platform. Its surprising Microsoft doesn’t have a runner in this race (enterprise blogging) yet (don’t get me started on Spaces) but then again, the dirssruption has only just begun. Sun and IBM are now both now contributing to Roller, but using a range of platforms for publishing. One of the issues here is that companies are not yet mandating blogging platforms – bloggers tend to choose their own. That laissez faire attitude is likely to change in 2006 as corporations attempt to bring the unmanaged spaces of blogs back into the managed spaces fold: we’ll be talking blogs and digital restrictions management before you know it. We’re going to see the usual industry consolidation and blog platform players will need to establish new partnerships and go to market models. 2006 is the year when the tech leviathans will shift from using blogging to selling it. We should expect to see blogging and social software practices from the likes of Accenture and IGS, and clearer platform development and marketing from the ISV community. So what happens when Microsoft offers its own feed server or blogging server product? Do Kim and Scoble rehost again? I guess the choice is theirs. What about customers and prospects that expect dogfood eating? I don’t think Sharepoint meets feeds is a blogging platform any more than Lotus Domino is. To Scoble’s point: is Microsoft going to buy Newsgator or not? Its actually kind of weird they haven’t, what with the chance to control an API, and buy something already tightly integrated with Microsoft tooling. This acquisition would be about feed aggregating and reading rather than blog and feed serving. It wouldn’t provide a publishing platform, but publishing and subscribing are going to come together anyway in the longer term, through OPML and SSE, or ATOM. Oh yeah – what is the MSDN blogging engine, anyway? For now though, what great references for WordPress. Another lame prediction for 06: it will be a great year for WordPress, which may mean a bigger apartment for the guys at Automattic. Finally let me say the blog spam issue drives me crazy. If Movable Type doesn’t get its act together soon monkchips and tecosystems may be joining Kim and Scoble. We don’t care whether the tool is open source or not, we just want the best tool for the best cost. [...]
Buon luogo, congratulazioni, il mio amico!
Buon luogo, congratulazioni, il mio amico!
Thanks, there is more reason to comment than ever before!
Thanks, there is more reason to comment than ever before!