Avant Go Dies, after June 30 2009
Today I read about the end of AvantGo’s mobile news service. I received this message:
“From June 30, 2009, AvantGo will no longer offer mobile Web content. Subscribers will not be able to sync their AvantGo accounts or update channels. Please consider using other services such as the Snac mobile widget application.
http://mysnacs.com/avantgo
Thank you.”
Putting this message into Google, I ran search to find out a little more information. I have not come across and official notices from the provider. I did notice that AvantGo were charging portals money for syndicating. Not a brilliant idea. Anyway, below is my fandom for the software and comments on why it might not have succeeded. Still, they had a good run.
Hardcore Fan
For 4 years I’ve used Avant-go and shall we say, whenever I have to hard reset my device, it’s the first thing to get back on-board. Unlike some, I’ve really been happy with it’s interface.
Problems Few
Like anyone, on occasions I get an account locked response when a data stream has dropped with my rubbish adsl connection. I only have to put up with one advert a day, so what? On the whole, it does what it says. I can add services easily, upgrade my account to my symbian or WM. phone, no worries.
Why are they going down?
I would guess it would have to do with the business model and advertising per se. It’s hard to feature only free content streaming it free to a device, but what great marketing info? If they had monitised this publishers, advertisers and product managers would get an idea what interests their readers. It’s like a mini Google.
Maybe they ought to have looked into was strategic partnerships with content providers like e-consultancy, wired, FT.com, and other high rise magazines to feature aspects of the content for a reduced price and within interest themes. Like sky, there’s a basic package and let’s say there was to be a porn package from playboy, penthouse etc…. Well, you pay for this package and there’s an option to order the magazine on-line, download it etc. With this premium electronic content target market, predominately male with disposable income would have been an ideal partner. Maybe this avenue was tried and it was the technical aspects of reducing, recoding and making it worth the while of the site creator to code and on-line version.
Catalogues for musical bands and shopping portals would again been great. Everyone flicks through their Amazon email and the weekly Sunday paper Avon catalogue and PC world, at least I do.
However it seems their model was ad-hoc advertising and more memory to download content. This was not enough. If there was better content, I would’ve upgraded.
Some time ago they did a promo for more space. I got an upgrade to 3mb per synch. Then there was no longer a need to upgrade. Good idea, but it’d been better to say try it for three months. Then the user has to cut the channels down. A majority probably continue with the same usage patterns. This is the same method used by mobile phone companies, try now, continue on or loose something you’re used to. It’s what I personally call, the crack offer!
The turning point for me not to upgrade was noticing many portals seemingly transmitting new updates [sci-fi news as an example], but the content remained static for 5 months. I noticed about 1 year ago, some of my favourite portals were not there, probably as they had been charged to provide content. AvantGo’s support sucked for the free product and was one of my major complaints against my choice to upgrade.
I’ve tried a few other readers with little success. Many seem to be ad-ridden, or purely seem not to function with some super geek OS set up. Let’s see what my IT friends say. For I, there’s quite a few that all my spyware and other privacy progs just scream alerts, plus seem quite invasive. I’ve seen a few that I’m to pay for. If there is no or little charge, plus support I think this is my only option.
I’ll try out their suggestion with the other reader. Even on cnet, there really seems a lack of decent free readers. On my phone I’m using Sony’s RSS feeder. This is okay, but the length of the articles is decidedly short. Maybe on cnet asia tech portal (often more interesting and content rich than the western one) they’re be an article.
Let’s see. Any recommendations are welcome!
