Fargo times out in June 2017

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Posted by Dr Andus
Aug 29, 2016 at 12:24 PM

“Fargo times out in June 2017”

http://scripting.com/2016/08/24/fargoTimesOutOnJune2017.html

“Hearing from Fargo users”

http://scripting.com/2016/08/25/imHearingFromFargoUsersNow.html

I’ve never quite understood the Fargo business model (or the product itself), but apparently it was advertising-based and it didn’t recruit sufficient number of users to make it sustainable. This seems to confirm that perhaps the freemium to subscription model makes more sense for outliner/task manager start-ups (especially in the age of adblockers), such as WorkFlowy, for whom it seems to work. To me the decision was always about weighing up the benefits of Fargo vs. WorkFlowy, and the latter was just a lot more convenient to use across platforms.

hat tip: “On Software Feedback” • Christian Tietze

http://christiantietze.de/posts/2016/08/on-software-feedback/

Posted by Paul Korm
Aug 29, 2016 at 04:58 PM

Brain tricks (or crash blossom)—I read the note from Dr Andus above and saw there was a new app called Fargo Times coming out in June 2017. I thought—“mmm, I wonder why that was announced so early”—and moved on.

Posted by jaslar
Aug 29, 2016 at 05:09 PM

I wanted to like Fargo, but found that at that point in my career, I needed something that worked seamlessly over iPad and desktop (Windows and Linux). The Workflowy interface was much easier to work with. Ultimately, I wound up moving to markdown (Editorial on the iPad, Smartdown or org-mode on Windows, org-mode and Notecase on Linux).

Still, sad to see a sturdy little app disappear. Winer is right that users have responsibilities. At work these days I mostly use Dynalist, and try to give them regular feedback.

Posted by dan7000
Aug 29, 2016 at 07:11 PM

Jaslar, can I ask what you like about Dynalist over Workflowy?

Posted by jaslar
Aug 29, 2016 at 08:54 PM

I suppose the real advantage for me of Dynalist over Workflowy was the ability to spin out outlines as distinct files. While I know there are strategies for doing that in Workflowy (multiple tabs in the browser, or favorites), somehow, as I was starting a new job, it was useful to have a discrete list of files in an order I could fiddle with on a navigation pane I could also show or hide. It was also easy to “archive” files that were no longer active.

Dynalist had the transparent UI of Workflowy (from which it clearly drew much inspiration). But Dynalist commands were slightly easier for me to remember, and seemed a little more consistent as I bounced from the Mac to Windows to Linux. On the other hand, neither Workflowy nor Dynalist was much fun to use under iOS or Android.

Dynalist was also committed to a couple of the things I was interested in: adding word count, for instance. Although I have yet to see it.

Both products are pretty wonderful, and I’m a “professional” subscriber to both.

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