Long ago I adopted NetNewsWire as my RSS reader. Suffice it to say while on the go I want to keep up with my news and blog reading, so I was happy to see that NNW existed for the iPhone. Furthermore, just sign up for a NewsGator account and now everything stays in sync. I can read on my iPhone or my MacBook Pro and when I switch to the other, everything’s up to date and chugs along merrily. This I’m happy about.

However, I read in the latest TidBITS about NewsGator’s changes. Suffice it to say, I’m not happy about this. I can understand the reasons for some of their changes and have no problem with that. However, it seems there’s a big loss in functionality and that the whole transition is not being handled very well. That services will end in about 3 weeks and they still don’t have the software nailed down, pay strategies nailed down, or really anything nailed down… that’s not good. They need to have their act together and a solid plan in place, THEN they can go about transitioning people to the new scheme. I’ve been in the software business for many years, and I know if things look this bad publicly, they’re even worse internally. They risk a massive fuck-up if they don’t pause, regroup, and rethink this.

My opinion is they should back off for now. Put off the end-of-life for a few more months, get their act together, figure out their strategy, get all of their software updated, get things ready to go including fielding some feedback from users and taking the time to improve or fix things prior to the big shift. Make this as smooth as possible for users. Keep users happy, that will lead to good things. Piss your users off, you’re just screwing yourself both short and long term.

If they don’t pause and regroup, they risk backlash and losing far more revenue than they hope to gain by this move.

Yes, I’d be willing to pay for the software if it means no-ads and the price is reasonable. But if they opt to botch this up and even the full paid versions are going to lack features we presently have (e.g. clippings), well… I suspect I may be looking for a new RSS reader and service soon.