

Pulse app goes free, gets $800,000 in VC - adamjernst
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/technology/15pulse.html

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ajg1977
"The company will also announce that it has raised $800,000 in venture
capital, the first step in moving along the path from building an app to
running a profitable business."

Funny, I would have thought the first step would be not to start giving away a
successful app for free.

I'll be watching with interest to see what their plan for revenue is. I
thought Pulse was kinda neat but rather an inefficient way to browse for news.
I suspect anything advertising related will just accentuate that.

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schindyguy
Am I getting my 2.99 back? Or is the free version ad supported? In the process
of trying to get more users, the free move might alienate their paying
customers

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hyperbovine
Meaning you will delete the app you paid $2.99 for in protest?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs>

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smackfu
Yeah, you basically are screwed. You paid $2.99 to have no ads, now you are
out $2.99 and will presumably see ads. Bait and switch, basically.

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bradleyjoyce
when I read the title I thought it was talking about <http://pulseapp.com/>
which I could see raising $800k ... but a news reader? I don't find pulse to
be THAT amazing.

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ojbyrne
They lost me at "Older entrepreneurs..." Not so much because of the blatant
age discrimination, which is probably just the reporter's fault, as much as it
was a reminder that what they're doing is kind of pedestrian, and will likely
be eclipsed soonish by html 5.

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bmelton
As someone about to get into this space, I didn't realize that personalized
reading was heating up so good. I suppose that competition is a good thing,
and of all the apps listed in the article (Flipboard, Zinio, Pulse), I think
that using the web as a platform is a competitive advantage for us, but damn.
How is this the first I've heard of this?

If this is seen as too self-serving, feel free to mod down, but I have to ask,
does anybody else use Pulse, or the apps mentioned? What do you like/dislike
about them?

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hackoder
Flipboard is pretty good.

I've also used 'Early Edition' which fetches your RSS feed into a newspaper
like view. Again, its a really nice option for reading RSS feeds. Now I just
pick up my iPad and flip through the first few pages of news rather than
always trying to bring the Unread count to 0 on Google Reader.

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bigiain
Seconded. Flipboard is directly responsible for me spending ~$20/month less on
magazines. There's a local (motorcycle) magazine which I've bought every (2
weekly) issue for ~12 years, which I haven't bought a single copy of since I
installed Flipboard. All the "I've got 10 or 15 minutes spare in a cafe
lingering over a coffee or two" reading needs are better met by Flipboard (for
me) than AMCN Two Wheels and New Scientist and various other magazines I'd
occasionally buy to fill in time.

I don't think it's "the future of print media", but I think it's certainly
indicative of one direction the future of print media might lie...

