Bloodbath in the Clouds Continues as RSS Email Service Shutters

Every day it feels like I am hearing about another cloud computing service that is shutting down. This time it's RSS FWD, a neat tool that let you read RSS feeds in your email account. The site just rolled out an upgraded offering in September.

They won't be the last. Beware, there's a bloodbath in the clouds!

In the months ahead we're going to see a slew of web apps fold. Many won't be spared. I suspect the massacre will claim some high profile sites. This will include apps that are VC backed, ad-supported and/or available only via a paid subscription. The good news is that those that do survive will be players for the long haul.

Years ago I used an awesome time tracking app called Red Gorilla. It went belly up in 2000. Since then I have been very careful about where I keep data that I care about. I even scrutinize tools from big companies.

As we saw with Google this week, you always need to keep an eye on the ball. I feel confident that Gmail is going to be around so I am glad that I have adapted my workflow to make it fit. However, even Gmail is slowing the amount of storage they are adding to its free service. So you never know.

This is exactly why I won't invest time or energy in a lot cloud-based apps today like Remember the Milk or Evernote. Yes, both are awesome and they have income. Evernote got funded and has paying subscribers. Remember the Milk too charges for many of its best services (like its iPhone app). However, I suspect many stick with the free versions - especially nowadays. And that could be problematic in a year or two if things continue. The good news is that these sites make it easy to sync or export your data. 

I do think, however, that strong players like Salesforce.com and 37 Signals will be around. Basecamp, for example, has tons of paying customers. Time will tell if 37 Signals can keep some of its weaker services going.

Beyond the bigs, however, you can be sure that if a service is home-spun it will fold, just as co.mments and now RSS FWD did. The founders are wisely focusing on their careers and/or more viable opportunities.

My advice to everyone is look for high ground. Think hard about where you store data that you care about. If you don't care about the information, then you're fine.

Comments

[Allen]

I just bought a 5 dozen bagels and some "live forever" cream cheese and I am hunkering down. I also got batteries for my flashlight.

:-P

[Steve Rubel]

Allen clearly since you are a NY'er this means you are ready for the twoinches of snow we're getting tonight. The world ends in NYC every time snowis forecast, right. Bundle up with your web apps!

[Allen]

it's funny - growing up, 8 inches was nothing... living in atlanta for a few years, 1" and the city shut down - now I agree with you, nyc has become weak for snow!

[Amit Agarwal]

SendMeRss, another RSSFWD like service, was also discontinued by NBC few months ago.

[Ian Betteridge]

This is one of the reasons that I only tend to go for cloud apps which have APIs that make local backup trivial (and preferably automatic). For example, I use getmail to download a copy of all my Gmail, storing it in a standard mbox file that can be read by pretty-much every email programme ever made (and that's fully documented, so I could, in a pinch, create my own import/export script).

The other option - and one that's probably less palatable to the Web 2.0 crowd - is to pay for services. If a company has paid-for products, it has *customers* rather than *users* - and customers tend to get abandoned far less easily.

[Troy Malone]

Well said Ian! "The other option - and one that's probably less palatable to the Web 2.0 crowd - is to pay for services. If a company has paid-for products, it has *customers* rather than *users* - and customers tend to get abandoned far less easily."

You're exactly right. Paid services are fine. It's the free oriented ones that attract the wrong demographic for survival and success.

@troymalonePelotonics

[Lindsay Donaghe]

I don't agree with you on Evernote being a purely "cloud-based app". The nice thing about it is that it does, as you mentioned, synchronization. I can have a client installed on several computers that can have an exact duplicate of what I have stored on Evernote's servers on each of them... If Evernote goes away next week, I still have my data. It's the best of both worlds. So yes, I trust my data to them... they're doing me a favor by providing me both access to it wherever I need it and automatic backup that is accessible even disconnected. I'm not sure what's so scary about that.

[phollows]

RSS Fwd joins Zookoda's imminent departure as announced here: http://blog.izea.com/2008/10/zookoda-to-be-put-on-ice.html

There's a migration wizard available at FeedBlitz for Zookoda publishers. Anyone interesting in migrating from RSSFwd is welcome to use our OPML import facilities or contact FeedBlitz tech support for help.

Thanks

Phil

[George Scott]

"Beyond the bigs, however, you can be sure that if a service is home-spun it will fold"

Only those that require paid employees. A good web application is automated, has tutorials, and makes sense while using it so you can cut down on the number of questions asked. I have ran officezilla.com since 2002 totally free and I don't understand why once something is written and up-and-running it would ever need to go "dark". Saying that someone or a group of people who have written a web based application that it will go offline due to some sort of lack of venture capital or angel funding is silly.

[Max Kalehoff]

Steve,The most important thing you noted is this: "Look for high ground. Think hard about where you store data that you care about." But that's always been true; that's how IT departments have typically made decisions, perhaps with too much risk aversion. But rather than a big crash, we're entering an era where there's simply a lot more experimentation going on, driven by the the fact it's easier than ever to launch an apps or service. You don't necessarily need VC money to get in the game. Passion is probably the most important requirement. As a result, we'll see a lot more apps continue to emerge and die, but, fortunately, resulting in more cycles of innovation, and more meaningful innovation. Yes, tougher economic times will weed out ideas that are me-too, poor or poorly executed. But I'm not sure there's a bloodbath going on. Times are just different; the way innovation occurs is different.Max

[Mike Abundo]

Three words: own your servers.