This is one of the reasons I keep reading Hacker News. It's a great source for cutting-edge tech news; more importantly, it's also a great source for important news.
I feel like there two things that should be A/B test here:
1) Best length of trial to get someone to sign-up for a free trial
2) Best length of trial to get someone to convert to paid user.
Your actual conversion is going to be a combination of those two factors.
Thanks for the extra feedback. I like focusing on the tags and interests. Some curation done by the system (or a human) could go a long way. I already get most of my views on the featured stories, so people definitely resonate with being steered where to go.
I want this to be a place that people will go if they're looking for something interesting to read, or if they have something interesting to tell. I appreciate the feedback as it will help me get there sooner!
to your points:
1. Yes. the homepage could you something more obvious. What about something where
(1) a few story abstracts are listed along, or even possibly the first paragraph.
(2) a mini-story submission
2. Content is still king, and definitely struggling with that.
3. I love your ideas for getting some content in there.
4. I really like the idea about making it about the storytellers along with the stories.
You've given me a lot to think about here. Thanks for taking the time. Anything else, please feel free to pass your thoughts along.
The login thing was something I went back and forth with. Eventually, that will be add. For now, I went with this method because (1) most people hate creating new accounts (2) I won't have the manpower or tools in place to make sure things werent spammy or for people to hide behind fictional accounts. I wanted a little bit of accountability to the stories, and with w/twitter and FB, it creates a filter and some accountability.
Great tale, and I like the approaches he suggest at the end that make cheating impractical. Hopefully, as a tenured professor, he can serve the likely storm of pressure he will get from his university for publishing this.
If it's something that you're spending your free time on, make sure it's something that you want to do. If you think you can make your product better, or even just simpler, I would keep ploddign along. If the other one is the one that you would rather use, then find something new.
he brings up about givign people what they want and not what you ask for. that is so hard to do. how many times have you built what you envisioned and then went, "This is what i asked for, but it doesn't feel right." The key is conversation, the more back and forth you have with customers, the more you will get a feel for what they really want.
I think the best about this is interview is that DHH really sells and believes what he says. He's just not replaying the party line, but a core belief of his.
This is definitely a chicken-and-egg problem. Until you get more users, you're not going to get the really interesting sways.
You definitely want to make sure you create a feature to determine which users have the most sway.
Ways to get traction: Find things that people vote on now. With March Madness coming up, maybe do something around that? Or well known debates with passionate online communities?