DrunkenBlog

NetNewsGator

So, today was interesting, although I'll have to backtrack a bit to explain why. As you may have heard, NewsGator will be buying the assets of Ranchero, not the least of which is Brent Simmons, but also happens to include NetNewsWire and MarsEdit.

You weren't supposed to hear about it until 9PM EST, with the official announcement occurring at the Web 2.0 conference tomorrow, but Om Malik once again proved he's a scooping bastard (This is a compliment). Apparently someone leaked, Malik sucked, they had to put out the PR release early, and I lost any immediacy I felt about the situation. Kudos to Malik -- there's a certain charm to someone poking a hole in the best laid plans of PR schedules, even if it causes them headaches.

It's hard not to be amused, even when you're on the other end for once, although I'm sure there was some swearing going on at the NewsGator end. Since the immediacy was gone, and you can get the details and specifics elsewhere, I'll flesh out what I've seen going on behind the scenes in a more personal way...

Something like a month ago I'd started pinging around about the possibility of something like Evening at Adler, and Brent was all for it but couldn't commit for awhile as his schedule was going to be up in the air around that time. Something was going on, as I was getting apologies for late responses -- due to the volume that goes back and forth with some, I have an idea of when people normally check email and when to expect a response -- and Brent was suddenly all over the map.

To put my mind at ease, Brent let me know it wasn't something going awry in his personal life, and that it was a good thing if it worked out. Now, I knew some of the offers Brent had been approached with before regarding NetNewsWire, and more importantly why they'd been turned down. There were only a few possibilities that could be going on that could affect his schedule that far into the future, and only a few companies he'd seriously entertain those offers from -- if that was going on.

When I mentioned this reasoning to him, he realized he'd said too much, and I dropped it -- but this was just conjecture, I wanted to actually know. I did ping around casually to a few contacts, and knew it wasn't Apple, nor Microsoft, nor Google, but then just kept my mouth shut because if he could tip me without causing legal problems he would have.

Saturday afternoon, I got a call from Brent letting me know about the NewsGator thing, in an attempt to give me a heads up on the story along with a few other people. This was a kind gesture, but since I'm not really all about the page hits or breaking news, I was primarily interested in just burning the curiosity out of my own head, because I'd been wondering about this for awhile.

First of all, non-electronic communication with someone I know through the site is a rarity, and I had to come to grips with the fact that Brent is just a guy. No chorus of angels when I picked up the receiver. Just an excited guy who could finally talk to someone about something he'd been sitting on for a long, long time -- and this is harder than it sounds. Second of all, it became clear after some talking that while this was a huge thing for Brent, the ramifications for NetNewsWire itself would be minor.

Brent isn't going to be buying an island to host the next Evening at Simmons Isle, although he wouldn't give me a dollar figure. I had to laugh when he told me he went out and bought himself a new $400 leather coat as his personal splurge -- considering how well NetNewsWire has done, it says something about his mindset. The impression I had was this bought some financial security, but that he won't be buying a personal jet.

Some of this came up back in the Ranchero chat, but the writing was basically on the wall that something had to give. It can be difficult to comprehend how large NetNewsWire was getting -- this was and is the largest desktop news aggregator on any platform, and it's on the Mac, and Ranchero consists of two people. Since Safari RSS hit, they'd been having their best sales to date, probably because it was raising awareness but was still so limited.

The key point is that throughout all of this, they're two people.

Brent and Sheila have worked their ass of for years, practically creating the market for news aggregators on the Mac. When you reach a certain level of sales, support becomes more of a burden, and when your app reaches a certain level of maturity, improving it becomes more and more of a burden. I don't think most people had an idea of what a grind they had gotten themselves in, especially with the release of MarsEdit.

MarsEdit was selling well, but the support was off the charts compared to NetNewsWire. With NetNewsWire, things are relatively passive -- it's about making sure the code works locally and it can understand what it's sucking down. If someone had a problem, it wasn't that hard to support it.

MarsEdit was a completely different ball game, and they now had to contend with everything in every service they tied into. You have to remember this was two people who also had to improve the apps while dealing with this, and NetNewsWire was quite a mature app, which means the requested features to take it to the next level wouldn't come cheap in terms of time.

One of those was synching, which engendered a big problem and is one of the reasons for the success of services like Bloglines. You may be a NetNewsWire user at home, but you may be stuck using another platform at work, or a PDA, and it's not a lot of fun to get home and find all the things you'd read set as unread, let alone having to re-add all the cool sites you'd found that day.

Synching between Macs is one thing, especially if they're local, but this is a whole new deal. They were already in a grind, and the resources it would take to do it right (If there's one thing about Ranchero, it's about doing it right) would be enormous. They'd need at least a big web-based client, since Brent has no interest in the Windows side of things, and all the glue to hold it together (similar to Shrook for OS X), which means they had a few options:

• Hire employees, to help with support and coding.

• Release new versions once every x years.

From our conversations, Brent has zero interest in having employees. It's just not his bag, and not why he and Sheila started Ranchero -- even the ramp-up to make sure they were handling support like they were needed to wasn't something they wanted to be spending their time on.

Along comes this company that is doing what they can to tie all these pieces together across platforms, is well-funded, and happens to have some very cool people who try to only buy very cool products. My impression is that the last part was entirely key to the decision, as I'll admit even I was surprised that Brent went for it.

I.E., our conversation went something like this:

"I'm still kind of surprised -- My impression was your entire deal was carving out a little place for yourself, where you could sit in seclusion and grow your software the way you thought was best without any of the..."

"I know, but that's what's great. They hooked me up with an internet phone, and I can just focus on programming NetNewsWire instead of anything else. When I have a UI or programming question, I can just pick up the phone and call.. (insert multiple names of people Brent thinks highly of within the NewsGator fold)"

It's a cliche, but in this case while the cash is nice, I really think Brent just felt he was hitting the wall on what he felt he could deliver via Ranchero -- at the quality he demands -- without Ranchero becoming more than he wanted to be. Brent just doesn't want to be a boss, he wants to code his app while having a little bit more of a life, and if he didn't like the company, or more importantly the people behind the company and their intentions, he probably would have gone in a different direction.

No one is really coming out and saying it, but MarsEdit may well end up being a casualty here, which would be sad because I happen to really like the app. With NetNewsWire, NewsGator had a no brainer. They want their news-glue to be on every platform that matters, and while they could have picked up any Mac app, they were picking up a huge amount of mindshare and marketshare on the platform with NetNewsWire.

Assuming they crunched the numbers themselves, whatever cash they outlaid to pick up the products is (probably) easily offset by what it would cost to develop and market their own Mac product into a similar position.

Brent is attached to MarsEdit, because, you know, he poured a good chunk of his time and energy into it, but as it stands this doesn't really fit with what NewsGator really does -- it's my impression it just happened to come along for the ride. What NewsGator does could change, or they might be able to find someone willing to give it a suitable home, but it's a fuzzy part of the whole deal and there's no point in sugar coating it -- I don't think they've even decided yet.

There's a problem that isn't really a problem when it comes to Brent and myself, which is that he's part of my web of trust. I've seen him in enough situations that given a new one I don't have to worry about what he'd do in it or why he's doing it. I.E., I'd leave my wallet with him, even though I've never actually met the guy, and there have been times I've needed to take a leap of faith with someone. If I knew Brent knew him, and Brent said he deserved the trust, that was good enough for me.

It's not just situational, I know enough about his decision making process to know why he he'd say I could trust them, as well as why he wouldn't abscond with my wallet. I mention this because this NewsGator company is going to be a fairly unknown entity to a lot of Mac users, let alone why they're snatching up one of the premier Mac shareware devs, let alone what it means for the product. I've had peripheral contact with some of the people at some subsidiaries of NewsGator, and they were all cool, but there's still a little bit of a question mark.

However, I know enough about Brent's decision making process to know what he values, and that he wouldn't be hooking himself into an uncool situation with uncool people or something that'd harm his baby. That's good enough for me for now, but, you know, I suppose I'm kinda biased, and think he waited way too long to pick himself up that leather jacket.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    October 05, 2005, at 01:29 AM