• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 18, 2005

Established RSS aggregator NewsGator Technologies Tuesday announced that it had acquired rival Bradbury Software LLC. The acquisition adds Bradbury's popular desktop client for Windows, known as FeedDemon, to NewsGator's formidable suite of services for reading and subscribing to a flourishing catalog of Really Simple Syndication feeds. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Before the summer's end, NewsGator plans to integrate FeedDemon with its online synchronization platform, which will be available as part of NewsGator Online's paid subscriptions. NewsGator's services run from no cost to $12.95 per month. Current users of FeedDemon, which had cost $29.95, will be given a two-year NewsGator Online subscription, which includes upgrades to new versions of FeedDemon.

Greg Reinacker, founder and chief technology officer of NewsGator, said the acquisition will give both companies the opportunity to grow. "As happy as we were with our platform, we knew a popular Windows desktop application was essential to expand," Reinacker said, adding: "For some reason, a lot of people don't like using Outlook."

In 2003, NewsGator introduced a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that displays syndicated posts as e-mail messages. The company later began offering its Web-based aggregation service along with versions for mobile devices. NewsGator currently is developing a revised version of its Outlook-based plug-in to improve synchronization, Reinacker said.

Reinacker said the arrival of major portals like Yahoo! and MSN into the syndication space will not harm NewsGator's prospects. "Those guys ... are introducing countless consumers to RSS--bringing it mainstream--which is a good thing," said Reinacker. "I'm comfortable that we offer a more advanced platform that more experienced users expect and will continue to rely on us for."

NewsGator--which will also get TopStyle, Bradbury's HTML editor for Windows--said in a statement that Nick Bradbury, the developer behind FeedDemon and TopStyle, will be joining the NewsGator team.

Reinacker also said NewsGator plans to offer FeedDemon as a client for its upcoming enterprise service unit. He said it is due for general release before the end of the year, and that its code name is Dino, while he said it will probably be called the "NewsGator Enterprise Service."