12 ms·

Breeze is closing on August 1

171 points by wlll 13y ago

bobsy 13y ago
Didn't know it existed... that said.. this is how you discontinue a product. Say sorry, send the client their data, recommend alternatives. Well done. Far better than past attempts by Yahoo, Google, Aqui-hires who shutter a product and leave it to clients to figure out how to get their data out.
- bornhuetter 13y ago
  "Say sorry, send the client their data, recommend alternatives." That's exactly what Google do, and they get ripped to shreds.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    He missed a point: don't let the service continue limping along and become a vital part of someone's toolkit.
    - zorpner 13y ago
      Precisely correct -- the real issue is that Google _didn't_ kill Reader in this manner. They subsidized its existence with their other products, undermining the support of other feed readers on the market, until they decided not to.
      - enjo 13y ago
        So the obvious solution is to let it continue to limp along then? Google did the right thing. They didn't want to invest anymore into it. They shut it down. They gave everyone on the planet TONS of notice. They provided the data. Now we have fun things like Feedly to take its place.
      - chaz 13y ago
        RSS was already on its way out -- on a steady decline since 2006. Google Reader peaked in 2011 and was on a decline since then, too. Though I generally stopped using RSS a few years ago, I do think it's the best reader out there. But the perception that RSS and all of the competitors were killed off by Google is, at best, hyperbole. http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+reader#q=google%20reader%2C%20%20rss&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+reader#q=googl...
  - levosmetalo 13y ago
    I must have been missing the part where Google recommended real alternative to Reader.
  - jbigelow76 13y ago
    But 37signals closed Breeze because it didn't hit a critical mass of customers. Google can't say the same thing about many cough Reader cough of the products they close down. That's why Google gets ripped to shreds.
    - MartinMond 13y ago
      I believe the number of customers necessary for reaching "critical mass" is different for Google than for 37signals than for a new SaaS company that just started out. Also Breeze had customers (that paid for it) while Google Reader had users that got it for free.
    - smackfu 13y ago
      It's not about critical mass, it's about profitability, for both companies.
      - jbigelow76 13y ago
        That's not necessarily true for either company. Remember when 37signals sold Sortfolio to focus more on core products? Sortfolio made over $200K in profit in a years time[1]. And Google made no attempt to monetize Reader at all so they can't say it was only about profitability. Companies make strategic decisions all the time even at the expense of profit when warranted. [1] http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-going-twice http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi...
        dylangs1030 13y ago
        Yes, but profitability also delineates users from customers. One will naturally get more attention than another. Comparing Google Reader to 37signals' Breeze is comparing apples to oranges, and it's not fair to subsequently conclude Google didn't do everything it could when it gave a longer sunset, but no alternatives. That's the one thing they didn't do, and their users were free.
        13y ago
- parfe 13y ago
  Right in Google's announcement: "Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months." http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cl... How is 37signals' announcement any better?
  - SkyMarshal 13y ago
    Yup, google has an engineering team dedicated to exactly that: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - pretz 13y ago
    37signals recommended functioning alternative services, not just data export.
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      So them saving users a Google Search for the alternatives was all it took to clear them? Damn, if only big G had known, they could have saved themselves a lot of flak. (Actually, it wouldn't have mattered. Don't kid yourself.)
    - dylangs1030 13y ago
      Yes, but that's not really Google's responsibility. They deliberately gave a three month sunset for users to find another solution. That's entirely the point of a sunset. Their product is also free, so it's not like they're hurting businesses or real customers by not helping them find alternatives. They're not really obligated to even do anything at all - it was a free service. If they were being paid it would make more sense.
      - deleted 13y ago
- keithsl 13y ago
  I would imagine a product that you paid for would be more willing to work with you than free products.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  I agree that this is the ideal of how to shut down a product, but I don't believe you're being fair with Google. They provided everything you could ask for in their announcement of Google Reader's retirement[1]: 1. Sympathy with users who still use Reader. 2. A simple way to save all data to transition to another product. 3. A three month sunset, which they are not obligated to give. You're right in that this announcement is missing one little line about alternatives to Reader. But there's two reasons why I don't think that matters - first, the explosion of alternatives mainly happened after that announcement, when alternatives like NewsBlur really came into mainstream knowledge. Secondly, Google doesn't really need to suggest alternatives when there's a sunset. Sure they could, but you could also just google it (no humor intended). You have three months to find it on your own, I think I can forgive them for not suggesting alternatives that in my opinion weren't even as mature as Reader yet (with the possible exception of Feedly). [1]: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-googl...
timmillwood 13y ago
shame
MartinMond 13y ago
Wasn't Breeze sold as "Pay once - use forever"? It's a joke that they now just cop out via "yeah we'll refund your money". Compare this to Backpack that was also discontinued but since it's paid for monthly, 37signals decided to let existing customers continue to pay and receive their service. So Backpack stays alive (albeit without new signups) since it continues to make them money, but Breeze gets closed and all customers get shafted. Even thought Breeze was sold as "forever" while Backpack was sold as "monthly". And let's not forget that Backpack needs a lot more (security) updates and maintenance than a simple mail server for mailing lists.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  How is that a cop out? You get your money back so whatever use you got from it was effectively free apart from the minor inconvenience of moving over to another service (which they are kind enough to make suggestions for).
  - MartinMond 13y ago
    Because it was sold as "just pay once and get your mailing list", not as "just pay once and get your mailing list for a few months then no more mailing list"
    - publicfig 13y ago
      Which is why they are refunding money, which negates the "just pay once" aspect.
      - anon808 13y ago
        yeah, but the customer didn't want the money, they wanted the service. That's why they gave the money in the first place. Obviously it's a very good showing that 37S is refunding customers their money, but I wouldn't be completely happy if I were a customer since what I was promised (the service) is no longer being delivered. I would feel a little burned. Do this often enough, and customer trust is eroded. How many folks are going to think twice before signing up for 37S next new product? I would.
fmavituna 13y ago
I would love to see the "why" in a blog post. When I first heard the launch of this product I was a bit skeptic. 37 Signals sells good to techies (and where techies are in charge of the order) but this particular product was specially geared towards non-techies, hence it would be really hard to make it work. My guess would be that the system didn't organically acquired enough users, I might be wrong, and they simply cut their loses. Maybe they'll post something in the upcoming days to enlighten us. Considering they constantly and harshly criticizing everyone else's business model and they literally wrote a book on how to run a business like this, a blog post with details is expected of them.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  Not enough people signing up seems like a good reason to end the service to me...
- peterevans 13y ago
  I imagined Breeze as something like a really fancy version of MajorDomo or mailman, and maybe some people would want that for nostalgia. I always thought that web forums and Google Groups took over for that particular niche, so in that regard, 37signals had a tough hill to climb to make Breeze relevant.
- sghill 13y ago
  > 37 Signals sells good to techies (and where techies are in charge of the order) but this particular product was specially geared towards non-techies, hence it would be really hard to make it work. Based on what? I've always assumed they focused on non-techies as a target market, based on they way they sell simplicity and fewer features.
nate 13y ago
Yesterday I read a Reddit post about a guy being depressed because he started a new project each month for the past 9 or so months and none of them became business. He gave each one a month before declaring it a failure. This provides two great reminders: 1) Even really smart and accomplished folks can't always predict what's going to be successful. But they got something delivered, gave it a good effort, and then decided to move on. 2) Declaring failure after a day or a month is far too short sighted. Breeze launched in January. So about 6 months of lots of data and customers (or lack of) to make decisions like this with. "Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute" -Louis C.K.
- alabut 13y ago
  Point #1 is a recent lesson learned for me. I remember seeing Robert De Niro on Inside The Actor's Studio saying essentially the same thing. He can't tell anymore while filming a movie how good it will be based on how the shoot is going, since he's been on well-run productions that flopped and chaotic stressful ones that came out great. Now he just concentrates on giving a great performance no matter what and doing a lot of work. Also: http://dcurt.is/what-a-stupid-idea http://dcurt.is/what-a-stupid-idea
andyhmltn 13y ago
That's a shame! This was one of the things I saw when it launched and thought 'why didn't I think of that?'
- smacktoward 13y ago
  At least now you know why you didn't think of it!
duck 13y ago
Here is the original announcement post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4997634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4997634 And just as everyone mentioned, it is hard to charge money for something like this these days and get traction.
masnick 13y ago
One of their replacement service suggestions is https://fiesta.cc https://fiesta.cc. It looks nice but it's totally free -- I get nervous when there is not a clear business model. (It was almost shut down a year ago according to their blog: http://blog.fiesta.cc. http://blog.fiesta.cc.) Another suggestion is http://www.mail-list.com http://www.mail-list.com. They charge around $1/user/year, which seems pretty reasonable to me (one reason I didn't sign up for Breeze is that $25 seemed like a lot for a lot of use cases, like a list for a season-long sports team). But in the fine print, it says the minimum is a $99 purchase per organization per year. Their final suggestion is http://www.emaildodo.com http://www.emaildodo.com. Call me a snob, but the late 90s design scared me off. So none of these seem like great options -- I'd rather use http://librelist.com http://librelist.com, which is run as a free for-the-good-of-the-internet service from what I can tell. Assuming Google and Yahoo Groups are too heavy-handed for a simple mailing list, what do you use? Any experience with these?
- jmharvey 13y ago
  If you're looking for another alternative, we're building http://zeromailer.com http://zeromailer.com . It's still in active development, but the core "just let me make a simple mailing list" is there. Pricing model is that lists with fewer than 1000 messages[1] per month are free, and higher traffic lists basically pay by volume. We also have a couple of premium features (e.g. custom domains) that we're upcharging for. I'd love to hear what you think of it, and what you think we can do better. Oh, and I've always liked being able to administer mailing lists from the command line, so we've got a command line interface in testing, ping me if you'd like to check it out. [1] messages = total volume of mail, so basically (emails * list members)
- AlexeyMK 13y ago
  Re: Fiesta.cc - we're on it. Ping me (alexey at username dot com) if you'd like to be in the beta for paid corporate email accounts, and I'd be happy to help you out!
petercooper 13y ago
What I find interesting is how quickly they made the decision. It was launched less than 4 months ago. It looked like a good service, I heard good reviews, and while I'm not against the "shut things down that don't get traction" idea, 4 months seems quite tight for something that was at least making some money. A lot of the most successful products take much longer to find their feet (although I appreciate this was just a side line and not the next Skype or Facebook).
- gpcz 13y ago
  There's a game theory element to this as well. If customers know that the product is likely to get discontinued shortly unless the product reaches an arbitrary and invisible (to the user) goal, then only early adopters are going to use it because it's too risky to rely on something that might die in 4 months. Early adopters are a very small section of a large bell curve of potential users. This could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy where their new products all die due to customer fear, not lack of customer interest.
- dkrich 13y ago
  I'm a bit confused about this as well. Was the expectation that they'd launch a paid version of an email distro, send a few tweets, and BOOM! they'd have a multimillion-dollar business? I understand that at their scale a few users paying a one-time $25 fee isn't going to register, but why launch a product as an experiment? Customers are going to become less and less open to trying products from a company that uses them as guinea pigs to test out product-market fit.
- vineet 13y ago
  Sounds like they may not have had a high enough viral coefficient as they would have wanted. So they felt like it was not worth investing more in product development or marketing. Definitely impressed that they had the discipline to shut it down in 4 months.
  - petercooper 13y ago
    I guess one difference between 37signals and many others who launch products is that they have a huge audience on which to promote the product out of the gate. It'd be crazy to tell someone with a small audience to quit on a product in 4 months but if you had 100,000 people hit a homepage and only 10 people buy.. maybe that's a clearer signal.
ghrev 13y ago
Makes ya wonder why they didn't just "Rework" it to attract more customers?
antidaily 13y ago
It's refreshing to see these guys fail for once. There, I said it.
- pavs 13y ago
  This is not the first service they closed.
- FireBeyond 13y ago
  There is a little schadenfreude for me. When they launched, there was a significant air of pompous righteousness from 37S about how poor existing offerings were, and how this was the way things should be. That, and their marketing materials for the service weren't just "polished phrasings", but actively lied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5040580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5040580
growthlol 13y ago
this. makes. my. day. guess the "gurus" didn't do enough "growth hacking". hahaha last laugh goes to. me.
- sbank 13y ago
  Actually, last laugh goes to them as they make more money and enjoy more success than you ever will. They also have the balls to discontinue a product that they for whatever reason find out is not worth their time. Go home, troll.
- acangiano 13y ago
  I post this not for the troll above, but for well-meaning folks who might share similar schadenfreude. This type of mentality will set you to fail in life. Time and time again. You might have a laugh at their expense now, but it might be the only thing you have. Meanwhile they have success and millions of dollars. A failure is just a temporary set back to them. The best attitude when you see people succeed is to say "Good for them", and not envy their success. Learn from it. In fact, learn from their failures as well, so that you are less likely to make the same mistakes.</troll-feeding>
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- growthlol 13y ago
  Oh no I have enraged the politically correct everythings-awesome hipsters. I bet you both "fed the troll" on your ipads in some coffee shop. Keep on making HN suck!
zhenjl 13y ago
What about Google groups as a replacement? Only potential problem is it may go the way of Google Reader?
- FireBeyond 13y ago
  It would be a bit like eating humble pie for them to recommend Google Groups. They did little hit pieces against Google and Yahoos services, to talk about how Breeze was orders of magnitude better.
joshdance 13y ago
Has anyone on HN actually used Breeze? Lots of comments, haven't seen one from a real user. How does a real user feel?
- bcobb 13y ago
  Used it for some small group communication when planning a bike race. It was a great alternative to 20-deep CC lists and Reply-All, and I think would have worked for our cycling club's internal mailing list if there had not been a cap of 50 members. It was nice to have a simple interface for managing list members (compared to, say, our web host-provided ezmlm lists), but its closing won't hinder our future event-related communication.
dave_sid 13y ago
I think Breeze was just an experiment for 37 Signals, which might explain the unusual pricing strategy of a one off payment. I'd bet they always intended to refund all users if they didn't meet a critical mass. If they had charged a subscription, then it would have been less simple than just giving each user their ten dollars back. Can't say I'm against it. It's certainly an interesting way of testing an idea, and backing out if it doesn't gain enough traction. I guess everyone is happy.
- dave_sid 13y ago
  Having said that, I'd be slightly sceptical the next time they launch a product. Are they just testing the water and is that too going to be discontinued in a few months time?
loupeabody 13y ago
This is an odd announcement considering the last I heard, 37signals would prevent new signups to phased out services, not abandon them entirely [0]. I can't imagine that Breeze was all that resource intensive to maintain, but I don't really know what goes into such a service. [0]http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-partner-at-37signals-twist-e337/ http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-pa... ... Jason Calacanis: Yeah. I remember Back Pack. David: We stopped offering to new people. Ta-Da List and Writeboard. The critical thing, I feel like, we did right was to say, “No new people could sign up for this. Everybody who’s still on it, we’re still going to support it.” We’re just going to continue to support it. Jason C: So what was the thinking there? It doesn’t cost us that much. David: It doesn’t cost that much to support it. What’s really expensive in running these services is you have to keep scale as your growing. You have to buy new hardware and manage the ops. You have to deal with the bugs that invariably will spill out from launching new features and all that stuff. If you stop launching new features and you stop growing then it becomes a non issue in many ways. Jason C: Set it and forget it. David: Exactly. Set it and forget it. It’s going to be there till… I don’t necessarily want to say the last guy closes the lights or whatever… but there’s no imperative for us to close it down. I think it’s a much more humane way to deal with… This conversation is in direct reference to Google's decision and management of shutting down Reader
- manuelflara 13y ago
  Maybe there was so few people who joined Breezer, and it's such a new service, that it doesn't make sense to have the product running for years if they made their mind already about not wanting to keep investing in it.
- petercooper 13y ago
  I can't imagine that Breeze was all that resource intensive to maintain, but I don't really know what goes into such a service. As far as I understand it, they send the e-mail directly from their own servers. Maintaining a system to do this reliably is quite labor intensive as you need to try and get (and stay!) whitelisted with the larger providers and constantly put out 'abuse' fires. Dealing with e-mail is a labor intensive pain in the ass at the best of times..
myspace 13y ago
funny they hid this news, not posting it on their SVN blog. http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3391-launch-basecamp-breeze-the-easiest-way-for-small-groups-to-keep-in-touch-via-email http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3391-launch-basecamp-breeze-t...
dylangs1030 13y ago
This is a really good example of how to write a shutter letter. But it's not appropriate to criticize companies that shutter free services (i.e. Google) for not doing every single checkmark on this list (especially if they only miss one of them[1]). Google has a lot of free products. Notably, Google's shut down of Reader comes under a lot of flak for how it was delivered to the public. But 37signals sold Breeze for $10. Google Reader was free. And yet, Google did everything 37signals did here except recommend alternatives. They even gave a longer sunset. 37Signals had customers - Google only had users. There is a world of difference in the utility and obligations in the company-user relationship there. Google could shutter any product it wants without telling anyone. It would be bad press, but doing anything more is a kindness and respect for users in imitation of how companies should treat customers. You didn't earn that kind of respect or attention from Google, they gave blog posts and announcements and free data and sunsets because they care. In most cases you would only get that kind of attention because companies don't want to burn paying customers from using their other products. This in no way criticizes 37signals. It's a great discontinuation announcement. But stop deifying them and demonizing Google when Google actually went above and beyond in letting you know. Those comments aren't productive, they're just angry. [1]: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-googl...
- philwelch 13y ago
  It's not shutting down Google Reader, but rather a pattern of behavior where products built on open standards are replaced by walled gardens. Google+ hasn't taken off either, but Google is doubling down on it rather than shutting it off.
  - captainchaos 13y ago
    In my opinion, this is not because they expect Google+ to be a true competitor to Facebook. The addition of information in Google+ user profiles allows them to compete with Facebook advertising in a key arena -- targeting ads based on self-volunteered user information which is more valuable and trustworthy rather than trying to derive this information based on browsing\searching patterns. Google+ serves to enhance Google's ad products more than it does to provide value to customers. Having said that, Hangouts (which most people consider a part of Google+) is a succesful product.
programminggeek 13y ago
Good show for honesty.
biot 13y ago
"So put a price on it and put it up for sale. If people buy that’s a yes. Change the price. If people buy, that’s a yes. If people stop buying, that’s a no. Crude? Maybe. But it’s real." (from http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3394-how-to-price-something http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3394-how-to-price-something) Perhaps this should be amended to include: "If not enough people buy, you shutter the service. Crude? Maybe. But it's real."
Zimahl 13y ago
I had a similar idea to this about a year back and didn't get out of the feasibility stage. After crunching the numbers I just couldn't make it work as a free service. Maybe I wasn't doing it right, but the bandwidth of attachments becomes the killer. Mail-list.com seems to have the pricing in just about the right spot, and I'm not sure that is something the common user is going to go use. It appears that Fiesta.cc had this issue as well. From their blog they were going to shut down about a year ago but managed to figure out how to keep it running. Their site is a little short on details - I'm not sure what the limits on the mailing lists are.
- sstrudeau 13y ago
  So why not offer a free service that doesn't support attachments and offer attachment support as a paid upgrade?
  - Zimahl 13y ago
    It's still on my list of possible projects. I kick it's tires every once in a while.
205guy 13y ago
Something I've wondered about shut-downs like this: why don't they sell the whole product off as an independent business? That's what brick and mortar places usually try to do before closing (if they didn't go bankrupt). I could imagine an enterpreneur wanting to take over a working product with an existing brand and a customer base instead of building it from scratch. Seems like this business could be run by a 1- or 2-person team, which would be ideal for an independent developer with the right skills. A running product that doesn't take off and limps along might just be what these people are looking for. Manage 3-5 part-time projects like this, and a couple could live comfortably in whatever location they choose. I suppose in this case, there were factors such as a shared backend with other in-house products, so it couldn't be extracted and switched to someone else's server. Still, seems like a shame it wasn't even considered. It would even be a great learning project for a budding entrepreneur (run servers, add features, do marketing, deal with customers).
- Maxious 13y ago
  A mailing list product is probably next to worthless without the 37Signals name.
Kerrick 13y ago
It's funny, I just set up a mailing list this weekend. Being a customer of 37signals' other products, the first thing I thought of was Basecamp Breeze. So, I went to their site to check it out. Their site had a "Why use Breeze" page. I looked at the page, and it compared itself (and introduced me) to competitors. The only thing Breeze itself said was better about Breeze compared to Google Groups was that it was easy to set up. So I went with Google Groups and spent an extra 10 minutes configuring it to save $25. They sold their own competitors to me.
gcanyon 13y ago
This is a great shutter letter, but I'll play devil's advocate: When someone starts something from scratch, there is a clear message of "We're trying to make this work, join us in the experiment." Anyone with half a brain understands the possibility that the idea could fail and either languish or die. Thoughtful users assess how they will participate on that basis. 37signals is not a startup. When they announce they are launching something, people are less likely to think that it could fail, and more likely to jump in. 37signals benefits from that good will, and has presumably a better chance of success, or at least a higher rate of guaranteed sampling, than some random startup. As such, 37signals is potentially in a position where they should be more committed than the average startup, and more graceful in their handling of failure. In short, they should be held to a higher standard. It's still a good letter.
nhangen 13y ago
Seems like 37S really are a one-hit wonder. Love the guys and the team, but seems they can't get anything launched that stays launched, and since they waited far too long to redo Basecamp, I'm positive they lost some business in the past 3-5. I'm curious to see what's next. Didn't Chalk get a longer run than this one?
- wmboy 13y ago
  Can't really call them a one hit wonder, the new Basecamp has taken off and IMO is better than the original Basecamp.
  - nhangen 13y ago
    It's still the same product, just a redesign. Basecamp is great, and it set the standard for many in the industry, but I was much more excited about their future when they had a diverse product offering.
    - wmboy 13y ago
      According to them it's not the same product (remember listening to a Mixergy interview where it was stressed that they were different - different code, solving the PM problem in a different way). Edit: just found the product page for Basecamp Classic (http://basecamp.com/classic http://basecamp.com/classic), man it looks pretty ugly!
      - nhangen 13y ago
        haha yes, it is ugly. One of the reasons my team left it behind a few years back. Tried a bunch of pm systems and strangely enough, the two we loved most were free (Asana and Trello).
- 1123581321 13y ago
  They also have Highrise, a CRM, and Campfire, a team chat. I understand that Highrise has been their fastest growing product for some time.
damoncali 13y ago
Am I the only one that notices the strange paradox of the valley's (speaking loosely) celebration of failure, and the often intensely negative reactions people have to a service being shut down? Doesn't one go with the other?

171 points by wlll 13y ago

bobsy 13y ago

Didn't know it existed... that said.. this is how you discontinue a product. Say sorry, send the client their data, recommend alternatives. Well done. Far better than past attempts by Yahoo, Google, Aqui-hires who shutter a product and leave it to clients to figure out how to get their data out.

bornhuetter 13y ago
"Say sorry, send the client their data, recommend alternatives." That's exactly what Google do, and they get ripped to shreds.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  He missed a point: don't let the service continue limping along and become a vital part of someone's toolkit.
  - zorpner 13y ago
    Precisely correct -- the real issue is that Google _didn't_ kill Reader in this manner. They subsidized its existence with their other products, undermining the support of other feed readers on the market, until they decided not to.
    - enjo 13y ago
      So the obvious solution is to let it continue to limp along then? Google did the right thing. They didn't want to invest anymore into it. They shut it down. They gave everyone on the planet TONS of notice. They provided the data. Now we have fun things like Feedly to take its place.
    - chaz 13y ago
      RSS was already on its way out -- on a steady decline since 2006. Google Reader peaked in 2011 and was on a decline since then, too. Though I generally stopped using RSS a few years ago, I do think it's the best reader out there. But the perception that RSS and all of the competitors were killed off by Google is, at best, hyperbole. http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+reader#q=google%20reader%2C%20%20rss&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=google+reader#q=googl...
- levosmetalo 13y ago
  I must have been missing the part where Google recommended real alternative to Reader.
- jbigelow76 13y ago
  But 37signals closed Breeze because it didn't hit a critical mass of customers. Google can't say the same thing about many cough Reader cough of the products they close down. That's why Google gets ripped to shreds.
  - MartinMond 13y ago
    I believe the number of customers necessary for reaching "critical mass" is different for Google than for 37signals than for a new SaaS company that just started out. Also Breeze had customers (that paid for it) while Google Reader had users that got it for free.
  - smackfu 13y ago
    It's not about critical mass, it's about profitability, for both companies.
    - jbigelow76 13y ago
      That's not necessarily true for either company. Remember when 37signals sold Sortfolio to focus more on core products? Sortfolio made over $200K in profit in a years time[1]. And Google made no attempt to monetize Reader at all so they can't say it was only about profitability. Companies make strategic decisions all the time even at the expense of profit when warranted. [1] http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-going-twice http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi...
      - dylangs1030 13y ago
        Yes, but profitability also delineates users from customers. One will naturally get more attention than another. Comparing Google Reader to 37signals' Breeze is comparing apples to oranges, and it's not fair to subsequently conclude Google didn't do everything it could when it gave a longer sunset, but no alternatives. That's the one thing they didn't do, and their users were free.
        13y ago
parfe 13y ago
Right in Google's announcement: "Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months." http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cl... How is 37signals' announcement any better?
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  Yup, google has an engineering team dedicated to exactly that: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- pretz 13y ago
  37signals recommended functioning alternative services, not just data export.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    So them saving users a Google Search for the alternatives was all it took to clear them? Damn, if only big G had known, they could have saved themselves a lot of flak. (Actually, it wouldn't have mattered. Don't kid yourself.)
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    Yes, but that's not really Google's responsibility. They deliberately gave a three month sunset for users to find another solution. That's entirely the point of a sunset. Their product is also free, so it's not like they're hurting businesses or real customers by not helping them find alternatives. They're not really obligated to even do anything at all - it was a free service. If they were being paid it would make more sense.
    - deleted 13y ago
keithsl 13y ago
I would imagine a product that you paid for would be more willing to work with you than free products.
dylangs1030 13y ago
I agree that this is the ideal of how to shut down a product, but I don't believe you're being fair with Google. They provided everything you could ask for in their announcement of Google Reader's retirement[1]: 1. Sympathy with users who still use Reader. 2. A simple way to save all data to transition to another product. 3. A three month sunset, which they are not obligated to give. You're right in that this announcement is missing one little line about alternatives to Reader. But there's two reasons why I don't think that matters - first, the explosion of alternatives mainly happened after that announcement, when alternatives like NewsBlur really came into mainstream knowledge. Secondly, Google doesn't really need to suggest alternatives when there's a sunset. Sure they could, but you could also just google it (no humor intended). You have three months to find it on your own, I think I can forgive them for not suggesting alternatives that in my opinion weren't even as mature as Reader yet (with the possible exception of Feedly). [1]: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-googl...

timmillwood 13y ago

shame

MartinMond 13y ago

Wasn't Breeze sold as "Pay once - use forever"? It's a joke that they now just cop out via "yeah we'll refund your money". Compare this to Backpack that was also discontinued but since it's paid for monthly, 37signals decided to let existing customers continue to pay and receive their service. So Backpack stays alive (albeit without new signups) since it continues to make them money, but Breeze gets closed and all customers get shafted. Even thought Breeze was sold as "forever" while Backpack was sold as "monthly". And let's not forget that Backpack needs a lot more (security) updates and maintenance than a simple mail server for mailing lists.

jiggy2011 13y ago
How is that a cop out? You get your money back so whatever use you got from it was effectively free apart from the minor inconvenience of moving over to another service (which they are kind enough to make suggestions for).
- MartinMond 13y ago
  Because it was sold as "just pay once and get your mailing list", not as "just pay once and get your mailing list for a few months then no more mailing list"
  - publicfig 13y ago
    Which is why they are refunding money, which negates the "just pay once" aspect.
    - anon808 13y ago
      yeah, but the customer didn't want the money, they wanted the service. That's why they gave the money in the first place. Obviously it's a very good showing that 37S is refunding customers their money, but I wouldn't be completely happy if I were a customer since what I was promised (the service) is no longer being delivered. I would feel a little burned. Do this often enough, and customer trust is eroded. How many folks are going to think twice before signing up for 37S next new product? I would.

fmavituna 13y ago

I would love to see the "why" in a blog post. When I first heard the launch of this product I was a bit skeptic. 37 Signals sells good to techies (and where techies are in charge of the order) but this particular product was specially geared towards non-techies, hence it would be really hard to make it work. My guess would be that the system didn't organically acquired enough users, I might be wrong, and they simply cut their loses. Maybe they'll post something in the upcoming days to enlighten us. Considering they constantly and harshly criticizing everyone else's business model and they literally wrote a book on how to run a business like this, a blog post with details is expected of them.

chris_wot 13y ago
Not enough people signing up seems like a good reason to end the service to me...
peterevans 13y ago
I imagined Breeze as something like a really fancy version of MajorDomo or mailman, and maybe some people would want that for nostalgia. I always thought that web forums and Google Groups took over for that particular niche, so in that regard, 37signals had a tough hill to climb to make Breeze relevant.
sghill 13y ago
> 37 Signals sells good to techies (and where techies are in charge of the order) but this particular product was specially geared towards non-techies, hence it would be really hard to make it work. Based on what? I've always assumed they focused on non-techies as a target market, based on they way they sell simplicity and fewer features.

nate 13y ago

Yesterday I read a Reddit post about a guy being depressed because he started a new project each month for the past 9 or so months and none of them became business. He gave each one a month before declaring it a failure. This provides two great reminders: 1) Even really smart and accomplished folks can't always predict what's going to be successful. But they got something delivered, gave it a good effort, and then decided to move on. 2) Declaring failure after a day or a month is far too short sighted. Breeze launched in January. So about 6 months of lots of data and customers (or lack of) to make decisions like this with. "Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute" -Louis C.K.

alabut 13y ago
Point #1 is a recent lesson learned for me. I remember seeing Robert De Niro on Inside The Actor's Studio saying essentially the same thing. He can't tell anymore while filming a movie how good it will be based on how the shoot is going, since he's been on well-run productions that flopped and chaotic stressful ones that came out great. Now he just concentrates on giving a great performance no matter what and doing a lot of work. Also: http://dcurt.is/what-a-stupid-idea http://dcurt.is/what-a-stupid-idea

andyhmltn 13y ago

That's a shame! This was one of the things I saw when it launched and thought 'why didn't I think of that?'

smacktoward 13y ago
At least now you know why you didn't think of it!

duck 13y ago

Here is the original announcement post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4997634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4997634 And just as everyone mentioned, it is hard to charge money for something like this these days and get traction.

masnick 13y ago

One of their replacement service suggestions is https://fiesta.cc https://fiesta.cc. It looks nice but it's totally free -- I get nervous when there is not a clear business model. (It was almost shut down a year ago according to their blog: http://blog.fiesta.cc. http://blog.fiesta.cc.) Another suggestion is http://www.mail-list.com http://www.mail-list.com. They charge around $1/user/year, which seems pretty reasonable to me (one reason I didn't sign up for Breeze is that $25 seemed like a lot for a lot of use cases, like a list for a season-long sports team). But in the fine print, it says the minimum is a $99 purchase per organization per year. Their final suggestion is http://www.emaildodo.com http://www.emaildodo.com. Call me a snob, but the late 90s design scared me off. So none of these seem like great options -- I'd rather use http://librelist.com http://librelist.com, which is run as a free for-the-good-of-the-internet service from what I can tell. Assuming Google and Yahoo Groups are too heavy-handed for a simple mailing list, what do you use? Any experience with these?

jmharvey 13y ago
If you're looking for another alternative, we're building http://zeromailer.com http://zeromailer.com . It's still in active development, but the core "just let me make a simple mailing list" is there. Pricing model is that lists with fewer than 1000 messages[1] per month are free, and higher traffic lists basically pay by volume. We also have a couple of premium features (e.g. custom domains) that we're upcharging for. I'd love to hear what you think of it, and what you think we can do better. Oh, and I've always liked being able to administer mailing lists from the command line, so we've got a command line interface in testing, ping me if you'd like to check it out. [1] messages = total volume of mail, so basically (emails * list members)
AlexeyMK 13y ago
Re: Fiesta.cc - we're on it. Ping me (alexey at username dot com) if you'd like to be in the beta for paid corporate email accounts, and I'd be happy to help you out!

petercooper 13y ago

What I find interesting is how quickly they made the decision. It was launched less than 4 months ago. It looked like a good service, I heard good reviews, and while I'm not against the "shut things down that don't get traction" idea, 4 months seems quite tight for something that was at least making some money. A lot of the most successful products take much longer to find their feet (although I appreciate this was just a side line and not the next Skype or Facebook).

gpcz 13y ago
There's a game theory element to this as well. If customers know that the product is likely to get discontinued shortly unless the product reaches an arbitrary and invisible (to the user) goal, then only early adopters are going to use it because it's too risky to rely on something that might die in 4 months. Early adopters are a very small section of a large bell curve of potential users. This could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy where their new products all die due to customer fear, not lack of customer interest.
dkrich 13y ago
I'm a bit confused about this as well. Was the expectation that they'd launch a paid version of an email distro, send a few tweets, and BOOM! they'd have a multimillion-dollar business? I understand that at their scale a few users paying a one-time $25 fee isn't going to register, but why launch a product as an experiment? Customers are going to become less and less open to trying products from a company that uses them as guinea pigs to test out product-market fit.
vineet 13y ago
Sounds like they may not have had a high enough viral coefficient as they would have wanted. So they felt like it was not worth investing more in product development or marketing. Definitely impressed that they had the discipline to shut it down in 4 months.
- petercooper 13y ago
  I guess one difference between 37signals and many others who launch products is that they have a huge audience on which to promote the product out of the gate. It'd be crazy to tell someone with a small audience to quit on a product in 4 months but if you had 100,000 people hit a homepage and only 10 people buy.. maybe that's a clearer signal.

ghrev 13y ago

Makes ya wonder why they didn't just "Rework" it to attract more customers?

antidaily 13y ago

It's refreshing to see these guys fail for once. There, I said it.

pavs 13y ago
This is not the first service they closed.
FireBeyond 13y ago
There is a little schadenfreude for me. When they launched, there was a significant air of pompous righteousness from 37S about how poor existing offerings were, and how this was the way things should be. That, and their marketing materials for the service weren't just "polished phrasings", but actively lied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5040580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5040580

growthlol 13y ago

this. makes. my. day. guess the "gurus" didn't do enough "growth hacking". hahaha last laugh goes to. me.

sbank 13y ago
Actually, last laugh goes to them as they make more money and enjoy more success than you ever will. They also have the balls to discontinue a product that they for whatever reason find out is not worth their time. Go home, troll.
acangiano 13y ago
I post this not for the troll above, but for well-meaning folks who might share similar schadenfreude. This type of mentality will set you to fail in life. Time and time again. You might have a laugh at their expense now, but it might be the only thing you have. Meanwhile they have success and millions of dollars. A failure is just a temporary set back to them. The best attitude when you see people succeed is to say "Good for them", and not envy their success. Learn from it. In fact, learn from their failures as well, so that you are less likely to make the same mistakes.</troll-feeding>
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
growthlol 13y ago
Oh no I have enraged the politically correct everythings-awesome hipsters. I bet you both "fed the troll" on your ipads in some coffee shop. Keep on making HN suck!

zhenjl 13y ago

What about Google groups as a replacement? Only potential problem is it may go the way of Google Reader?

FireBeyond 13y ago
It would be a bit like eating humble pie for them to recommend Google Groups. They did little hit pieces against Google and Yahoos services, to talk about how Breeze was orders of magnitude better.

joshdance 13y ago

Has anyone on HN actually used Breeze? Lots of comments, haven't seen one from a real user. How does a real user feel?

bcobb 13y ago
Used it for some small group communication when planning a bike race. It was a great alternative to 20-deep CC lists and Reply-All, and I think would have worked for our cycling club's internal mailing list if there had not been a cap of 50 members. It was nice to have a simple interface for managing list members (compared to, say, our web host-provided ezmlm lists), but its closing won't hinder our future event-related communication.

dave_sid 13y ago

I think Breeze was just an experiment for 37 Signals, which might explain the unusual pricing strategy of a one off payment. I'd bet they always intended to refund all users if they didn't meet a critical mass. If they had charged a subscription, then it would have been less simple than just giving each user their ten dollars back. Can't say I'm against it. It's certainly an interesting way of testing an idea, and backing out if it doesn't gain enough traction. I guess everyone is happy.

dave_sid 13y ago
Having said that, I'd be slightly sceptical the next time they launch a product. Are they just testing the water and is that too going to be discontinued in a few months time?

loupeabody 13y ago

This is an odd announcement considering the last I heard, 37signals would prevent new signups to phased out services, not abandon them entirely [0]. I can't imagine that Breeze was all that resource intensive to maintain, but I don't really know what goes into such a service. [0]http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-partner-at-37signals-twist-e337/ http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-pa... ... Jason Calacanis: Yeah. I remember Back Pack. David: We stopped offering to new people. Ta-Da List and Writeboard. The critical thing, I feel like, we did right was to say, “No new people could sign up for this. Everybody who’s still on it, we’re still going to support it.” We’re just going to continue to support it. Jason C: So what was the thinking there? It doesn’t cost us that much. David: It doesn’t cost that much to support it. What’s really expensive in running these services is you have to keep scale as your growing. You have to buy new hardware and manage the ops. You have to deal with the bugs that invariably will spill out from launching new features and all that stuff. If you stop launching new features and you stop growing then it becomes a non issue in many ways. Jason C: Set it and forget it. David: Exactly. Set it and forget it. It’s going to be there till… I don’t necessarily want to say the last guy closes the lights or whatever… but there’s no imperative for us to close it down. I think it’s a much more humane way to deal with… This conversation is in direct reference to Google's decision and management of shutting down Reader

manuelflara 13y ago
Maybe there was so few people who joined Breezer, and it's such a new service, that it doesn't make sense to have the product running for years if they made their mind already about not wanting to keep investing in it.
petercooper 13y ago
I can't imagine that Breeze was all that resource intensive to maintain, but I don't really know what goes into such a service. As far as I understand it, they send the e-mail directly from their own servers. Maintaining a system to do this reliably is quite labor intensive as you need to try and get (and stay!) whitelisted with the larger providers and constantly put out 'abuse' fires. Dealing with e-mail is a labor intensive pain in the ass at the best of times..

myspace 13y ago

funny they hid this news, not posting it on their SVN blog. http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3391-launch-basecamp-breeze-the-easiest-way-for-small-groups-to-keep-in-touch-via-email http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3391-launch-basecamp-breeze-t...

dylangs1030 13y ago

This is a really good example of how to write a shutter letter. But it's not appropriate to criticize companies that shutter free services (i.e. Google) for not doing every single checkmark on this list (especially if they only miss one of them[1]). Google has a lot of free products. Notably, Google's shut down of Reader comes under a lot of flak for how it was delivered to the public. But 37signals sold Breeze for $10. Google Reader was free. And yet, Google did everything 37signals did here except recommend alternatives. They even gave a longer sunset. 37Signals had customers - Google only had users. There is a world of difference in the utility and obligations in the company-user relationship there. Google could shutter any product it wants without telling anyone. It would be bad press, but doing anything more is a kindness and respect for users in imitation of how companies should treat customers. You didn't earn that kind of respect or attention from Google, they gave blog posts and announcements and free data and sunsets because they care. In most cases you would only get that kind of attention because companies don't want to burn paying customers from using their other products. This in no way criticizes 37signals. It's a great discontinuation announcement. But stop deifying them and demonizing Google when Google actually went above and beyond in letting you know. Those comments aren't productive, they're just angry. [1]: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-googl...

philwelch 13y ago
It's not shutting down Google Reader, but rather a pattern of behavior where products built on open standards are replaced by walled gardens. Google+ hasn't taken off either, but Google is doubling down on it rather than shutting it off.
- captainchaos 13y ago
  In my opinion, this is not because they expect Google+ to be a true competitor to Facebook. The addition of information in Google+ user profiles allows them to compete with Facebook advertising in a key arena -- targeting ads based on self-volunteered user information which is more valuable and trustworthy rather than trying to derive this information based on browsing\searching patterns. Google+ serves to enhance Google's ad products more than it does to provide value to customers. Having said that, Hangouts (which most people consider a part of Google+) is a succesful product.

programminggeek 13y ago

Good show for honesty.

biot 13y ago

"So put a price on it and put it up for sale. If people buy that’s a yes. Change the price. If people buy, that’s a yes. If people stop buying, that’s a no. Crude? Maybe. But it’s real." (from http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3394-how-to-price-something http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3394-how-to-price-something) Perhaps this should be amended to include: "If not enough people buy, you shutter the service. Crude? Maybe. But it's real."

Zimahl 13y ago

I had a similar idea to this about a year back and didn't get out of the feasibility stage. After crunching the numbers I just couldn't make it work as a free service. Maybe I wasn't doing it right, but the bandwidth of attachments becomes the killer. Mail-list.com seems to have the pricing in just about the right spot, and I'm not sure that is something the common user is going to go use. It appears that Fiesta.cc had this issue as well. From their blog they were going to shut down about a year ago but managed to figure out how to keep it running. Their site is a little short on details - I'm not sure what the limits on the mailing lists are.

sstrudeau 13y ago
So why not offer a free service that doesn't support attachments and offer attachment support as a paid upgrade?
- Zimahl 13y ago
  It's still on my list of possible projects. I kick it's tires every once in a while.

205guy 13y ago

Something I've wondered about shut-downs like this: why don't they sell the whole product off as an independent business? That's what brick and mortar places usually try to do before closing (if they didn't go bankrupt). I could imagine an enterpreneur wanting to take over a working product with an existing brand and a customer base instead of building it from scratch. Seems like this business could be run by a 1- or 2-person team, which would be ideal for an independent developer with the right skills. A running product that doesn't take off and limps along might just be what these people are looking for. Manage 3-5 part-time projects like this, and a couple could live comfortably in whatever location they choose. I suppose in this case, there were factors such as a shared backend with other in-house products, so it couldn't be extracted and switched to someone else's server. Still, seems like a shame it wasn't even considered. It would even be a great learning project for a budding entrepreneur (run servers, add features, do marketing, deal with customers).

Maxious 13y ago
A mailing list product is probably next to worthless without the 37Signals name.

Kerrick 13y ago

It's funny, I just set up a mailing list this weekend. Being a customer of 37signals' other products, the first thing I thought of was Basecamp Breeze. So, I went to their site to check it out. Their site had a "Why use Breeze" page. I looked at the page, and it compared itself (and introduced me) to competitors. The only thing Breeze itself said was better about Breeze compared to Google Groups was that it was easy to set up. So I went with Google Groups and spent an extra 10 minutes configuring it to save $25. They sold their own competitors to me.

gcanyon 13y ago

This is a great shutter letter, but I'll play devil's advocate: When someone starts something from scratch, there is a clear message of "We're trying to make this work, join us in the experiment." Anyone with half a brain understands the possibility that the idea could fail and either languish or die. Thoughtful users assess how they will participate on that basis. 37signals is not a startup. When they announce they are launching something, people are less likely to think that it could fail, and more likely to jump in. 37signals benefits from that good will, and has presumably a better chance of success, or at least a higher rate of guaranteed sampling, than some random startup. As such, 37signals is potentially in a position where they should be more committed than the average startup, and more graceful in their handling of failure. In short, they should be held to a higher standard. It's still a good letter.

nhangen 13y ago

Seems like 37S really are a one-hit wonder. Love the guys and the team, but seems they can't get anything launched that stays launched, and since they waited far too long to redo Basecamp, I'm positive they lost some business in the past 3-5. I'm curious to see what's next. Didn't Chalk get a longer run than this one?

wmboy 13y ago
Can't really call them a one hit wonder, the new Basecamp has taken off and IMO is better than the original Basecamp.
- nhangen 13y ago
  It's still the same product, just a redesign. Basecamp is great, and it set the standard for many in the industry, but I was much more excited about their future when they had a diverse product offering.
  - wmboy 13y ago
    According to them it's not the same product (remember listening to a Mixergy interview where it was stressed that they were different - different code, solving the PM problem in a different way). Edit: just found the product page for Basecamp Classic (http://basecamp.com/classic http://basecamp.com/classic), man it looks pretty ugly!
    - nhangen 13y ago
      haha yes, it is ugly. One of the reasons my team left it behind a few years back. Tried a bunch of pm systems and strangely enough, the two we loved most were free (Asana and Trello).
1123581321 13y ago
They also have Highrise, a CRM, and Campfire, a team chat. I understand that Highrise has been their fastest growing product for some time.

damoncali 13y ago

Am I the only one that notices the strange paradox of the valley's (speaking loosely) celebration of failure, and the often intensely negative reactions people have to a service being shut down? Doesn't one go with the other?