Readmill shuts down, team joins Dropbox(readmill.com) |
Readmill shuts down, team joins Dropbox(readmill.com) |
It explains clearly what happened; it isn't overly congratulatory to themselves; it puts a clear emphasis on how their users can export their data; it thanks those who helped them on the journey; it beautifully summarizes everything they built and stood for, from the solid typography, to the interactive timeline, to the team photos, to the simple, clean choice of a "Epilogue" as the title. And it'll be the perfect homepage come July 1st too.
Sad to see such a high-quality product shut down. I've looked to Readmill for design inspiration a lot over the past year.
Readmill's story ends here. Many challenges in the world of ebooks remain unsolved, and we failed to create a sustainable platform for reading. For this, we're deeply sorry. We considered every option before making the difficult decision to end the product that brought us together.
"Now cracks a noble heart.—Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"
I wish the team all the best at Dropbox, and I'm sure Dropbox will benefit immensely from their remarkable talent for building amazing software. At the same time, though, I wish they would have just started charging $10 a month for the service!
Google Books does this now
Or you could just toss it in your Dropbox... assuming they integrate Readmill into the mobile app, I fail to see why everyone doesn't win.
And Readmill's design is just sexy as hell. It's sad to lose the experience of using their software.
In fairness to the CEO's that broker these deals, they are probably trying to make sure that their workers land on their feet. But it still sucks to realize you and your friends are considered saleable assets.
I'm not sure I can recall the last time cattle were sold off as a team because their abilities were respected; perhaps the closest team of domesticated animals we can find changing hands between companies would be the Budweiser Clydesdales, from wherever they came from; even this example is strained. Nay (neigh?), engineers should take pride in being acquired - you suddenly have a whole new world of resources and collaborators opened up to you, even if you end up having to pivot the original concept, and you have the best of both worlds in terms of having a group of people to enter a company with, and being able to talk about your achievements at the previous engagement. And if you were in a startup to begin with, did you expect that you wouldn't pivot ever?
You and your friends aren't saleable assets, you're the company. And that's something to take pride in.
- Audiogalaxy Dec 2012: online iTunes-like audio library, synced across/streamed to all of my devices
- Snapjoy Dec 2012: online iPhoto-like experience, synced...
- Mailbox Mar 2013: can Dropbox be the new Gmail? If Google search needs disruption, Gmail is no different
- Zulip Mar 2014: online chat and team collaboration with file/screenshot/text/etc sharing integrated to a whole new level. Maybe Droplr/CloudApp on steroids
- Readmill Mar 2014: online ezine/book library... maybe doc management?!
PS: from their Sold and Endorse acquisitions I can only speculate that they might have a(n) (e)commerce play in their mind.
Readmill have done an awesome job at giving us tools to rescue our data. But where to put it? How can we keep getting value out of the time we've invested into Readmill? I personally have over 600 highlights and tens of thousands words written in the margins, now locked up in a big JSON dump.
A few of us have banded together to build a tool ( http://readshelf.co ) to rehome your Readmill library. It'll sync your Readmill highlights up until July 1 (and you can upload your dump as well.) When Readmill shuts down for good, we're hoping there'll be a nice replacement service that we can integrate with—giving you some continuity with your library.
Of course, all of your stuff will be exportable in a useful format; lest history repeat itself. In fact, we're really keen to hear suggestions on:
- a sustainable business model for something like this
- some best practices around your data: access, portability, etc.
That's a problem with free services, and sometimes even with some paid services.
I much prefer using desktop software, even when it's discontinued, it still works.
I think the next big thing could be bringing App Stores to servers. 1 click install, zero config, etc. I recently set up my own webmail, it was a pain in the ass. It could be made a lot easier, and I think people would pay for the convenience.
It doesn't get much easier than "yum install" or "apt-get install".
The SaaS model is deeply flawed, and once people start to realize the implications for security, privacy, and ongoing availability, there'll probably be a shift back to running your own software on your own system.
Whomever comes up with a good consumerized VPS platform with an app store is probably going to win big.
So much this. I still fire up xvi32 to look at a binary file once or twice a month... while the latest minor version release was about 2 years ago, it haven't seen any serious changes since circa 2001.
VMware Virtual Appliances and Microsoft Azure apps try to do this. They are of course strictly enterprise-focused though.
>> Hey, we got acqui-hired by Dropbox and we are now shutting ReadMill down! Thanks for all the fish and hope you enjoyed ours.
That's it. That's all it would have taken.
Sure "apt-get install" installs the software, but configuring it to do anything useful is still anything but trivial. Installing Linux, creating a user accounts, setting up an SMTP, POP & IMAP server, installing a webmail app with spam filtering, making sure they all talk to each other, is hard. Installing WordPress is the easiest I've seen, and you still need to create a DB and copy the connection details.
I'm thinking of something as simple as you see a list of Apps (WordPress, PHPBB, etc). Just click 'install' and pick the directory you want it installed in. And you pay $.99 for the convince.
I think it would be good for the industry to move away from ad supported services, and to let users pay to host the services themselves.
I somewhat agree with your perspective, but think its going to be a hard sell. People buy apps because you don't have to think about it. Configuring a service is in direct opposition of that convenience, and I don't think you'll ever have enough training wheels in the interface to fix that.
I could be wrong.
Web Apps have been very good to developers. Zero piracy, no installation issues, low support costs. Users like them because it's simple to get started, they aren't tied to one computer. The downsides are all long term -- and it's hard to get people to think about the future, or things like privacy.
I'm not sure where the drive would come from to make it happen. I don't see which company would put in the investment to get it started.
It's got a long way to go before everyone can use it, but I'm finding more and more uses for it.
Employees in the acquired company are put under heavy pressure to take whatever deal is offered. Who wouldn't want to keep working with their friends? The CEO's/senior team will keep the employees out of the loop so that rank-and-file don't move first and take any negotiating power away from the CEO.
Not every acqui-hire is a payoff for the employees in the acquired company. It can also be a face-saving gesture when money runs out to make a shutdown look semi-successful for the founders.
Truly, having your company fail is a horrible thing, at least in Silicon Valley right now. :)