RealTime

CNET's Web 2.0 Blog Review - 9/27/2006

From Rafe Needleman Web 2.0 blog comes our latest review.  Rafe's review points out some very key differences between RealTime and some of the other RSS readers out there.  The main one being that when we built RealTime we intentionally chose to optimize the product from an ease of use perspective.  As our key goal with the product was to make RSS easy for all the user's out there who would use it, but were perhaps a bit initimidated by other applications that were designed for more hardcore power users.  With probably the best quote from Rafe's review being:

RealTime's got most other feed recognizers trumped on ease of use.

Click here to read Rafe's full review which fairly explains the spectrum of products out there and where he feels RealTime fits within it.

PC World's Techlog - 9/26/2006

Click here to read Harry McCracken's review of RealTime.   Harry's post is quite fair and as a user who  identifies themself as someone who is aware of RSS, but does not have an RSS reader his comments are a fair representation of what the vast majority of non-RSS user's might experience today.  With his closing quote being a great summary of his initial experience:

"RealTime does look reasonably nifty, and appropriately low-key--and since I don't yet have an RSS reader of choice (unless you count My Yahoo), I'm going to live with it for awhile..."

Here's hoping the product grows on you Harry.

The 360 Post about RealTime's Business Model

Here's an interesting article from The 360 which takes a very different angle in reviewing RealTime.  Click here to read Susan's post about RealTime's business model.  I should note this article is aimed more at the advertisers, but fairly points out that our product is supported by web advertising. 

One thing I should point out, however, is that RSS is really the core technology that enables us to now "stream" text based news services down to the end user and a big reason why RealNetworks chose to get into the market now is the fact that RSS is a technology still in the very early stages of adoption.

O'Reilly Radar Blog Post - 9/26/2006

o    Click here to read the O'Reilly radar blog post reviewing RealTime.  The reviewer, Brady, points out some very key differences between RealTime and other similar service like the fact that RealTime doesn't require users to create an account, but for user's who do create an account RealTime can be sychronized across computers.  That said, Brady has some very fair points about our Feed reading page which isn't something that will totally replace someone's existing RSS reader.  This is very much something we are working on and hope to deliver on in later releases.

Official Launch Press Release - 9/26/2006

Click here to read the official company press release about RealTime.  Truthfully, it provides the most detailed description of the product that I've read thus far and it does includes quotes from Jeff Chasen about some of the feedback we've received from internal usability sessions and pre-beta users.  Definitely worth a read.

Business 2.0 Blog Post 9/25

Here's an additional, but much more detailed posting about RealTime from Erick Schonfeld at Business 2.0.  Click here to read his article which really does touch on one of the key messages and value propositions about RealTime - its simple and easy to use. 

I should note that Erick asked an extremely fair question about where the media playback support in the client was and Jeff's comment is accurate in that media capture and playback is definitely in our roadmap, but we really wanted to keep this version of the product simple and easy to understand.  This was intentional as we've always felt it was easier to add features to a product that people already understood than it is to explain a whole host of features at once.

Seattle PI Coverage - 9/25

So its Day 1 for RealTime and already we're getting picked up in the media.  Click here to read the AP story that the Seattle PI picked up. On a whole the article is a very basic description of the service largely based on our press briefings, but stay tuned as I'm sure more detailed articles will be published.