The Pluck RSS Reader is shutting down, according to a message posted on the Pluck website:
“All versions of Pluck’s RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck’s web
edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of
end users well for several years, but with Pluck’s focus in other business areas, the
venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line.”
Current Pluck users have until 1/5/2007 to export their data into another RSS
Reader.
It’s interesting they put the following rose-colored spin on why they’re exiting the consumer
RSS Reader market:
“The good news is that RSS reading capabilities continue to develop across the web.
You can get them by default in all of your favorite browsers, and RSS-based news reading
capabilities are rapidly being baked into your favorite web sites…”
…ahem, not to mention Microsoft is integrating RSS into Outlook next year, Google
will probably have Gmail integration
soon, and Yahoo has MyYahoo and Yahoo
Mail for feeds.
I’m afraid to say that consumer RSS Readers are rapidly becoming commodities
and will soon be next to worthless – the real business is white label
and enterprise solutions. So Newsgator for example is well positioned. And Bloglines and
Rojo both got out while the going was still good, via acquisitions. Although it must be
said that niche RSS Readers will still have their place – for example FeedDemon (owned by Newsgator)
will continue to get an adequate number of subscriptions.
But as a standalone company, it’s no longer possible. Consumer RSS Readers are a dead
market now.
Other reactions
Trevor Jonas: “To
say I now regret recommending Pluck to so many friends, colleagues and everyone within
Bite would be an understatement.”
Randy Morin: “Pluck was
one of the first great RSS readers. It competed for awhile with NewsGator but the entire
product-line became very buggy over time. The end of an era. RIP!”
