Pluck Not Plucky Enough; Likely First of Many RSS Readers to Fall.

Pluck the consumer RSS reader, is shuttering its doors as of January 2007.

All versions of Pluck’s RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck’s web edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of end users well for several years, but with Pluck’s focus in other business areas, the venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line.

This likely hails the end of fee based RSS readers.Â I’ve got to side with ReadWriteWeb on this one — its really, really hard to compete with Free.Â Especially when the 900 lb Gorilla who is pushing free stuff (Google Reader) has a t-shirt on that says “Google”, and (to flog a metaphor) is sitting in a jungle full of free RSS readers (Bloglines, Netvibes amongst them); and (because I can’t resist flogging a metaphor to death) of course, King Kong has just entered the fray with a bandana that says “Microsoft” (Internet Explorer 7 supports RSS feeds and, of course, is also free).

Tony Hung

Tony Hung is the editor of the BlogHerald. He is also a physician finishing his last year of residency in General Internal Medicine, and blogs at Deep Jive Interests , where he rants, occasionally, on new media topics.