Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Why not offer SI members a free account? That would speed up the transfer.

The transfer from SI to here will happen eventually. No need for me to try to speed it up. Everything's in good shape and could handle a massive influx of traffic at the drop of a hat.

Plenty of other businesses offer discounted competitive upgrades. If someone has forked out to make SI their posting home then they will be reluctant to move unless SI goes under.

If you are proactive and want those members before that happens, then that is the solution.

There was a pretty substantial discount on lifetime subscriptions, but that expired a couple of months ago.

But I do agree that people will by and large be reluctant until/unless SI goes under. It's a huge pie. I don't need InfoSpace's slice to get enough to eat. Although I also happen to believe they'll be handing me their slice eventually anyway.

A membership fee acts as a vetting process,

In the SI universe, yes. In the iHub universe, we have other vetting methods and membership fees quite simply just pay the bills. We charge them because bandwidth and hardware aren't free and Matt and I would really get a kick out of drawing a salary someday.

Am finding the lack of viewing 10 msgs at a time annoying

We have 10-at-a-time viewing. But it's only available to subscribers.

Basically the model is free access (including posting privileges) for everyone, and a modest fee to enable some extra features like Next10 and PM's.

Bottom line, regarding just giving away free accounts with all features enabled for the purpose of snagging all the market share we can is that market share doesn't pay; it costs.