Breeze is closing on August 1
basecamp.com
basecamp.com
Google has a lot of free products. Notably, Google's shut down of Reader comes under a lot of flak for how it was delivered to the public. But 37signals sold Breeze for $10. Google Reader was free. And yet, Google did everything 37signals did here except recommend alternatives. They even gave a longer sunset.
37Signals had customers - Google only had users. There is a world of difference in the utility and obligations in the company-user relationship there. Google could shutter any product it wants without telling anyone. It would be bad press, but doing anything more is a kindness and respect for users in imitation of how companies should treat customers. You didn't earn that kind of respect or attention from Google, they gave blog posts and announcements and free data and sunsets because they care. In most cases you would only get that kind of attention because companies don't want to burn paying customers from using their other products.
This in no way criticizes 37signals. It's a great discontinuation announcement. But stop deifying them and demonizing Google when Google actually went above and beyond in letting you know. Those comments aren't productive, they're just angry.
[1]: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-googl...
The addition of information in Google+ user profiles allows them to compete with Facebook advertising in a key arena -- targeting ads based on self-volunteered user information which is more valuable and trustworthy rather than trying to derive this information based on browsing\searching patterns.
Google+ serves to enhance Google's ad products more than it does to provide value to customers.
Having said that, Hangouts (which most people consider a part of Google+) is a succesful product.
Ad targeting might not only be more effective, but it could also save money by not spending money futilely throwing a product in the face of users who are just not interested.
It's essentially not just a way to opt-in to advertising, it's a way to opt-out of all the other things you might not want. Whether this works 100% of the time is another debate entirely.
I'm not trying to build a strawman here, but people judge Plus and Twitter by the wrong metric. Facebook is not the only model of how to run a social network. Google+ is a website for professional connections with selectivity based on who will see what, precisely because there are so many different types of relationships available. Facebook is literally just for friends (and should be). They're doubling down on it because users are using it, it's showing itself to be a better product. And - it's gaining traction without Google having to resort to the sort of advertising that Microsoft is doing with Bing. It's much more organic.
But I digress - my comment here was specifically in response to the many comments I've read disparaging Google for its handling of Reader. I agree with you that Google has a tendency to merge products into semi-androgyny. But I also think this is a good thing. Google is slowly limiting its product selection while maximizing effort into each product. There may be some kinks to work out, but I believe that the basic philosophy of quality over quantity is there.
And, honestly, products like Reader and Feedburner are so multifarious and down the pipeline that without a solid base of paying customers Google could never hope to improve them substantially. In fact, they haven't really been improved substantially.
I believe that while Google could improve the way they're doing it, it will be a net win for them to consolidate services into more feature-rich products they can devote exponentially more attention to.
Yes, someone has to develop real technology and various open source tools. I am glad Google is around.
it's showing itself to be a better product
How? Because in my mind the #1 feature of a social network, regardless of domain, are the social interactions it enables -- and right now Google+ is losing to the likes of Branch and Quora in that department.
Fair enough.Do you also think the same for the numbers released by Facebook or twitter or instagram too?
What open-source system did Google+ replace? OpenSocial? That thing never took off. Google tried for years but nothing happened.
Now you want Google to shut off Google+? Have you read what happens when Google shuts down products?
Google just can't win.
[1] http://gigaom.com/2013/03/13/chris-wetherll-google-reader/
I say this as someone who doesn't have an account with either service. The quality content with Google+ is there, Facebook is clearly just useless tripe.
I can't actually say how it went down at Google, but I suspect they knew they weren't going to be making money with Reader very quickly, yet still allowed it to become the dominant RSS player.
The 37signals shutdown seems practical, the Google one reeks of greed.
[0]http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-pa...
...
Jason Calacanis: Yeah. I remember Back Pack.
David: We stopped offering to new people. Ta-Da List and Writeboard. The critical thing, I feel like, we did right was to say, “No new people could sign up for this. Everybody who’s still on it, we’re still going to support it.” We’re just going to continue to support it.
Jason C: So what was the thinking there? It doesn’t cost us that much.
David: It doesn’t cost that much to support it. What’s really expensive in running these services is you have to keep scale as your growing. You have to buy new hardware and manage the ops. You have to deal with the bugs that invariably will spill out from launching new features and all that stuff. If you stop launching new features and you stop growing then it becomes a non issue in many ways.
Jason C: Set it and forget it.
David: Exactly. Set it and forget it. It’s going to be there till… I don’t necessarily want to say the last guy closes the lights or whatever… but there’s no imperative for us to close it down. I think it’s a much more humane way to deal with…
This conversation is in direct reference to Google's decision and management of shutting down Reader
As far as I understand it, they send the e-mail directly from their own servers. Maintaining a system to do this reliably is quite labor intensive as you need to try and get (and stay!) whitelisted with the larger providers and constantly put out 'abuse' fires. Dealing with e-mail is a labor intensive pain in the ass at the best of times..
Compare this to Backpack that was also discontinued but since it's paid for monthly, 37signals decided to let existing customers continue to pay and receive their service.
So Backpack stays alive (albeit without new signups) since it continues to make them money, but Breeze gets closed and all customers get shafted. Even thought Breeze was sold as "forever" while Backpack was sold as "monthly".
And let's not forget that Backpack needs a lot more (security) updates and maintenance than a simple mail server for mailing lists.
Obviously it's a very good showing that 37S is refunding customers their money, but I wouldn't be completely happy if I were a customer since what I was promised (the service) is no longer being delivered. I would feel a little burned.
Do this often enough, and customer trust is eroded. How many folks are going to think twice before signing up for 37S next new product? I would.
According to the site , they are giving you your data back anyway.
Which doesn't mean that closing in ten years or ten days would be the same, of course.
Sometimes things just don't make business sense and you kill them. I have killed stuff in the past that has literally had 1 user , it wouldn't seem sensible at all to keep it running simply for that one person (unless they were paying me significantly).
The best way to judge a company in my opinion is how they handle it when they do. In this case distribution to customers was minimized.
So the refund is actually being generous.
Now I'm glad I didn't recommend it, though I wish the circumstances had been different.
It's like going to an all you can eat, eating the entire buffet yourself and then demanding they go out and find you more to satisfy your limitless hunger.
37S promised the product "forever", and provided it for 4 months - even if you didn't think "forever" actually meant until the end of time, I think it is reasonable to assume it meant more than a year.
I think people are choosing to see this from 37S (or any other software co's) perspective. Fine, whatever 37S's expectations were to begin with didn't work out, so 37S is closing the service. Makes perfect sense, and godspeed, 37S. But the other side of a transaction is a customer that put money, time and effort into this product. Even if 37S gives back the money, the customer isn't made completely whole; I don't think it's illogical to think folks wouldn't be completely happy with this outcome, no matter how great of a job 37S did communicating the closing.
If my favorite coffeeshop closes I am inconvenienced because maybe I now have to walk further for worse coffee, but they don't really owe me anything.
It's not like alternatives are hard to find either.
Recommendation of alternatives were there as well which is excellent.
The second part was going to happen without Breeze in any case. But getting all the data out of Breeze and somwhere else properly is a problem created by Breeze closing down so early.
37signals sell to business customers. For them, having someone blocked for a day to get all that set up somewhere else costs quite a bit of money.
Still, I think 37signals handles that the best they can. There isn't much more to do then to grind your teeth and say sorry to current customers.
But they are causing very real inconvenience for existing customers, so all complaints are valid.
In any case I think we can agree that "forever" is longer than January to August.
If people pay for indefinite use, the company has an obligation to provide for such use so long as they are capable of doing so.
Far better than past attempts by Yahoo, Google, Aqui-hires who shutter a product and leave it to clients to figure out how to get their data out.
That's exactly what Google do, and they get ripped to shreds.
Google did the right thing. They didn't want to invest anymore into it. They shut it down. They gave everyone on the planet TONS of notice. They provided the data.
Now we have fun things like Feedly to take its place.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+reader#q=googl...
Also Breeze had customers (that paid for it) while Google Reader had users that got it for free.
Companies make strategic decisions all the time even at the expense of profit when warranted.
[1] http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi...
Comparing Google Reader to 37signals' Breeze is comparing apples to oranges, and it's not fair to subsequently conclude Google didn't do everything it could when it gave a longer sunset, but no alternatives. That's the one thing they didn't do, and their users were free.
37S saw Breeze only as a product to live and die on it's own merits (even if some customers really loved it). Google saw Reader as a product to manipulate the market (if you subscribe to that theory). This is why I think Google deserves to get ripped while 37signals shouldn't, even if Reader only had "users" and not "customers".
...not sure if you were joking though.
How is 37signals' announcement any better?
(Actually, it wouldn't have mattered. Don't kid yourself.)
They deliberately gave a three month sunset for users to find another solution. That's entirely the point of a sunset.
Their product is also free, so it's not like they're hurting businesses or real customers by not helping them find alternatives. They're not really obligated to even do anything at all - it was a free service. If they were being paid it would make more sense.
1. Sympathy with users who still use Reader.
2. A simple way to save all data to transition to another product.
3. A three month sunset, which they are not obligated to give.
You're right in that this announcement is missing one little line about alternatives to Reader. But there's two reasons why I don't think that matters - first, the explosion of alternatives mainly happened after that announcement, when alternatives like NewsBlur really came into mainstream knowledge. Secondly, Google doesn't really need to suggest alternatives when there's a sunset. Sure they could, but you could also just google it (no humor intended). You have three months to find it on your own, I think I can forgive them for not suggesting alternatives that in my opinion weren't even as mature as Reader yet (with the possible exception of Feedly).
[1]: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-googl...
It looked like a good service, I heard good reviews, and while I'm not against the "shut things down that don't get traction" idea, 4 months seems quite tight for something that was at least making some money. A lot of the most successful products take much longer to find their feet (although I appreciate this was just a side line and not the next Skype or Facebook).
Customers are going to become less and less open to trying products from a company that uses them as guinea pigs to test out product-market fit.
Definitely impressed that they had the discipline to shut it down in 4 months.
Another suggestion is http://www.mail-list.com. They charge around $1/user/year, which seems pretty reasonable to me (one reason I didn't sign up for Breeze is that $25 seemed like a lot for a lot of use cases, like a list for a season-long sports team). But in the fine print, it says the minimum is a $99 purchase per organization per year.
Their final suggestion is http://www.emaildodo.com. Call me a snob, but the late 90s design scared me off.
So none of these seem like great options -- I'd rather use http://librelist.com, which is run as a free for-the-good-of-the-internet service from what I can tell.
Assuming Google and Yahoo Groups are too heavy-handed for a simple mailing list, what do you use? Any experience with these?
Pricing model is that lists with fewer than 1000 messages[1] per month are free, and higher traffic lists basically pay by volume. We also have a couple of premium features (e.g. custom domains) that we're upcharging for.
I'd love to hear what you think of it, and what you think we can do better.
Oh, and I've always liked being able to administer mailing lists from the command line, so we've got a command line interface in testing, ping me if you'd like to check it out.
[1] messages = total volume of mail, so basically (emails * list members)
This provides two great reminders:
1) Even really smart and accomplished folks can't always predict what's going to be successful. But they got something delivered, gave it a good effort, and then decided to move on.
2) Declaring failure after a day or a month is far too short sighted. Breeze launched in January. So about 6 months of lots of data and customers (or lack of) to make decisions like this with.
"Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute"
-Louis C.K.
Their site had a "Why use Breeze" page. I looked at the page, and it compared itself (and introduced me) to competitors. The only thing Breeze itself said was better about Breeze compared to Google Groups was that it was easy to set up. So I went with Google Groups and spent an extra 10 minutes configuring it to save $25.
They sold their own competitors to me.
When I first heard the launch of this product I was a bit skeptic. 37 Signals sells good to techies (and where techies are in charge of the order) but this particular product was specially geared towards non-techies, hence it would be really hard to make it work.
My guess would be that the system didn't organically acquired enough users, I might be wrong, and they simply cut their loses. Maybe they'll post something in the upcoming days to enlighten us.
Considering they constantly and harshly criticizing everyone else's business model and they literally wrote a book on how to run a business like this, a blog post with details is expected of them.
Based on what? I've always assumed they focused on non-techies as a target market, based on they way they sell simplicity and fewer features.
It appears that Fiesta.cc had this issue as well. From their blog they were going to shut down about a year ago but managed to figure out how to keep it running. Their site is a little short on details - I'm not sure what the limits on the mailing lists are.
"So put a price on it and put it up for sale. If people buy
that’s a yes. Change the price. If people buy, that’s a
yes. If people stop buying, that’s a no. Crude? Maybe. But
it’s real."
Perhaps this should be amended to include: "If not enough people buy, you shutter the service. Crude? Maybe. But it's real."
I'd bet they always intended to refund all users if they didn't meet a critical mass. If they had charged a subscription, then it would have been less simple than just giving each user their ten dollars back.
Can't say I'm against it. It's certainly an interesting way of testing an idea, and backing out if it doesn't gain enough traction. I guess everyone is happy.
Seems like this business could be run by a 1- or 2-person team, which would be ideal for an independent developer with the right skills. A running product that doesn't take off and limps along might just be what these people are looking for. Manage 3-5 part-time projects like this, and a couple could live comfortably in whatever location they choose.
I suppose in this case, there were factors such as a shared backend with other in-house products, so it couldn't be extracted and switched to someone else's server. Still, seems like a shame it wasn't even considered. It would even be a great learning project for a budding entrepreneur (run servers, add features, do marketing, deal with customers).
That, and their marketing materials for the service weren't just "polished phrasings", but actively lied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5040580
When someone starts something from scratch, there is a clear message of "We're trying to make this work, join us in the experiment." Anyone with half a brain understands the possibility that the idea could fail and either languish or die. Thoughtful users assess how they will participate on that basis.
37signals is not a startup. When they announce they are launching something, people are less likely to think that it could fail, and more likely to jump in. 37signals benefits from that good will, and has presumably a better chance of success, or at least a higher rate of guaranteed sampling, than some random startup.
As such, 37signals is potentially in a position where they should be more committed than the average startup, and more graceful in their handling of failure. In short, they should be held to a higher standard.
It's still a good letter.
And just as everyone mentioned, it is hard to charge money for something like this these days and get traction.
Didn't Chalk get a longer run than this one?
Edit: just found the product page for Basecamp Classic (http://basecamp.com/classic), man it looks pretty ugly!
I understand that Highrise has been their fastest growing product for some time.
guess the "gurus" didn't do enough "growth hacking".
hahaha
last laugh goes to.
me.