Newsgator’s Acquisition of Feeddemon

The news is that Newsgator acquired Feeddemon (actually Bradbury Software who develops Feeddemon, and TopStyle). Feeddemon is definitely the main interest of Newsgator since they are the developers of the Newsgator Outlook add-in.

I think this is a logical move since the RSS/feedreader market suddenly became too crowded and forces have to be joined in order to be able to go beyond simple feed reading capabilities. Reading Nick Bradbury’s post about the acquisition, it seems as though the initial plan is to tighten synchronization on multiple platforms.

Certainly. The most obvious will be that FeedDemon will integrate very closely with NewsGator’s online synchronization platform, enabling using FeedDemon on multiple computers while maintaining state between all of them. You could even use FeedDemon on your home computer, NewsGator Outlook Edition while at work, and NewsGator Mobile Edition while traveling, and still have everything synched between devices.

Beyond that, having a server-side piece offers a lot of interesting possibilities. Coupling a rich desktop client with a first-rate server-side aggregator provides the best of both worlds: you get the power of a Windows application and all the flexibility of a web-based approach. There have been a number of features I’ve been wanting to add to FeedDemon that required a server-side piece which I can now provide.

Nick Bradbury also mentions that current Feeddemon users will be given a two year business plan subscription to Newsgator. This seems like a good deal but it would not mean much to people who do not use Outlook.

So, it will be interesting to see how this acqusition will affect the RSS market and how it will work for Newsgator and Nick Bradbury. I had tried both products and both had their positive sides. I am going to be a part of Newsgator’s newest beta testing, which promised several synchronization features. I wish they could bring Feeddemon in that beta phase at some point for us to test out.