Two Years of Pinboard(blog.pinboard.in)
blog.pinboard.in
Two Years of Pinboard
http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/07/two_years_of_pinboard/
11 comments
Thank you!
Congrats on the success! A simple, elegant app that just gets shit done -- and with a revenue model.
Bit of a blast from the past here, but I want to thank you for some unintentional inspiration you gave me 6 years ago when Steve & I launched reddit. You see, I've always kept a "wall of negative reinforcement" (basically negative commentary that I print out and stick on the wall) that I find quite inspiring.
You deleted the post, but "Y Combinator’s 2005 Summer Founders Program: A Complete Dud" was one of the things that always gave me a boost during some of reddit's darker days.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050813233842/http://tech.rufy.c...
It may sound ridiculous, but I really do appreciate it. I've been fortunate to have had immensely supportive people in my life - namely my parents - yet I've always relished criticism & negative feedback (maybe it's from growing up with a girl's name?) as motivation to push myself harder to better both my work and myself. Thank you.
Bit of a blast from the past here, but I want to thank you for some unintentional inspiration you gave me 6 years ago when Steve & I launched reddit. You see, I've always kept a "wall of negative reinforcement" (basically negative commentary that I print out and stick on the wall) that I find quite inspiring.
You deleted the post, but "Y Combinator’s 2005 Summer Founders Program: A Complete Dud" was one of the things that always gave me a boost during some of reddit's darker days.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050813233842/http://tech.rufy.c...
It may sound ridiculous, but I really do appreciate it. I've been fortunate to have had immensely supportive people in my life - namely my parents - yet I've always relished criticism & negative feedback (maybe it's from growing up with a girl's name?) as motivation to push myself harder to better both my work and myself. Thank you.
I won't be as kind since he doesn't seem to have learned not to be a jerk about other people's startups: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1214068
One would expect just a little humility: http://www.google.com/trends?q=reddit%2C+pinboard
One would expect just a little humility: http://www.google.com/trends?q=reddit%2C+pinboard
Those aren't the same people.
The post is an interesting specimen, though. Presumably the first harangue ever written about YC (avant la lettre!), and covers many of the bases, including you-call-that-a-startup-I-could-have-written-that-over-the-weekend and you'll-never-make-a-business-out-of-it.
The post is an interesting specimen, though. Presumably the first harangue ever written about YC (avant la lettre!), and covers many of the bases, including you-call-that-a-startup-I-could-have-written-that-over-the-weekend and you'll-never-make-a-business-out-of-it.
I think you may have me confused with someone else. I rolled my eyes at Reddit back when you launched (thinking it was yet another Delicious clone :-) ) but fortunately never put those sentiments in writing, so I didn't have anything to recant when I changed my mind a couple of years later.
The post you cite seems to be by some guy named Lucas?
The post you cite seems to be by some guy named Lucas?
Sorry! I fell down the rabbit hole of Internet surfing and totally botched the link - I'd found this entry from your delicious bookmark: http://www.delicious.com/search?p=summer+flounders&chk=&...
Back then I was actively monitoring the delicious bookmark for reddit.com and your note had made me chuckle.
Back then I was actively monitoring the delicious bookmark for reddit.com and your note had made me chuckle.
Pretty sure delicious was smaller than 27 million bookmarks just two years in.
Otoh, that was only 20-ish days of growth when I left yahoo...
Otoh, that was only 20-ish days of growth when I left yahoo...
Bookmarking concept was just evolved then.
Also, while the devs in the forums were really nice, it seemed like they couldn't just do anything about feature requests or bugs and had to wait for some sort of lordly blessing.
With Maciej it's pretty much drop an email to the mailing list, and if the request is reasonable enough, BAM, it's there!
With Maciej it's pretty much drop an email to the mailing list, and if the request is reasonable enough, BAM, it's there!
The forum happened a year or two after the acquisition by yahoo. If it was before the Big Rewrite, all changes were on hold until after the Big Rewrite. If it was after, most of the engineers on the backend were moved elsewhere, so nothing that required backend changes could ever be done.
It was more like the experience with inboard in the early days.
It was more like the experience with inboard in the early days.
joshu had to deal with orders of magnitude more users and a crazy growth rate. Just the fact that he could keep the site up under that pressure impressed me to no end
I really like maciej's writing style. Something about it that creates an instant feeling of rapport and sympathy.
[deleted]
Sometimes when I feel blue about HN and what it has become, I refer to Dabblers and Blowhards for a little bit of levity. It was an essay before its time. Maciej is a fine writer and if I could recommend a single thing he's written it would be Scott and Scurvy (as much as I love Attacked By Thugs for comedic reasons).
I thought Pinboard was just another bookmarking site, they are not. Their archival account is something that I've been looking for as an alternative to Evernote, which is ok, but it is getting slower and less stable as my archive gets bigger. Pinboard is promising, competition is good.
The fee is based on the formula (number of users $0.001), so the earlier you join, the less you pay.*
The current price is $9.37 which indicates 9370 users, yet this post says 12,500 active. But if the first customer was $2.04, is it $2.04 + u * 0.001? So meaning $9.37 reflects 7330 users? Sorry for picking through the math but I'm interested in stuff like this :-) Did a big group of users get in free during a certain period, etc?
It's a beautiful business model in a way. It doesn't suit people who want to trial it out but the social proof of 12,000 people already being through the doors makes the $9 more palatable to latecomers. I'm wondering if I could apply a similar model to my e-mail newsletters (which people keep saying I should charge for).
The current price is $9.37 which indicates 9370 users, yet this post says 12,500 active. But if the first customer was $2.04, is it $2.04 + u * 0.001? So meaning $9.37 reflects 7330 users? Sorry for picking through the math but I'm interested in stuff like this :-) Did a big group of users get in free during a certain period, etc?
It's a beautiful business model in a way. It doesn't suit people who want to trial it out but the social proof of 12,000 people already being through the doors makes the $9 more palatable to latecomers. I'm wondering if I could apply a similar model to my e-mail newsletters (which people keep saying I should charge for).
The multiplier has changed over time. It started out as a tenth of a penny and has been reduced several times, so you can't really math out without additional info. Not that it's stopped anyone.
Ah, cunning! :-) (Or, more likely, a necessity to stop the signup fee being $100 by now ;-)) Good work.
I love Pinboard. The killer feature is Twitter integration. I do 99% of my Twitter browsing on my phone, and when I see a link that might be interesting, I just favorite it and Pinboard comes by and picks up those favorites for me to read later.
Very awesome service.
Very awesome service.
Congratulations.
It would be useful if you wrote beside the current figures Tue percentage change on last year.
It also struck me that linking the price to a growth factor may end up overpricing your service leading to a halt in signups. Is this the case or not?
It would be useful if you wrote beside the current figures Tue percentage change on last year.
It also struck me that linking the price to a growth factor may end up overpricing your service leading to a halt in signups. Is this the case or not?
I avoid percentages because I think they can be a little silly when talking about small absolute numbers. I think we had just over 2k active users last year at this time, for what that's worth.
I am not worried about overpricing the site as long as I think the signup fee represents good value for new users.
I am not worried about overpricing the site as long as I think the signup fee represents good value for new users.
Excellent product - been a happy customer for 6 months. The idea of increasing the price by a fraction per user is a good one - the more customers you have the more expensive it gets to run, but you also reward early adopters.
Another happy customer here.
I wish more people would signup - since that would assure long term stability/security of my bookmark archive.
And GZ on your birthday Pinboard!
I wish more people would signup - since that would assure long term stability/security of my bookmark archive.
And GZ on your birthday Pinboard!
DigitalOne seems to offer much more than I get with Linode. Anyone have experience with them?
Heh, yeah. You will certainly get a lot more than you do with Linode. Great host if you like adventure and hate to be bothered with status updates or receive credit in the event of an outage. Enjoy!
Who did you switch to after DigitalOne?
Any alternatives you'd recommend?
I get the "too good to be true" vibe from their pricing. Too much RAM for too little money compared to everyone reputable...
FWIW, I have all my important stuff at Linode, but I also have a server from Hetzner in Germany. It costs €49 per month (about $60 I think) and it's a Core i7 with 8GB RAM. Their network has proven rock solid and the hardware totally fine in the last 6 months and I only got it because I had so many personal recommendations. I don't know how they can do it but clearly it's at least possible to offer serious power at bargain basement prices.
What's the latency from the US?
Getting 114ms from it to a Linode in Atlanta, GA. 92ms to a machine in New York. 19ms to a machine in London. Which seems OK given the distance.
Srsly though, thanks maciej and team, love pinboard and use it e'erday. It's pretty much second nature to highlight, right-click, 'Post Page to Pinboard', fill some pithy tags, and feel instant dopamine flood of peace for some reason. Great when I have that one site on the tip of my cerebellum that I can just grep through pinboard for. Way to go on the 2 years and coming years of success.