4 ms·

As a long term Pinboard customer I dislike this "I am doing nothing and I am proud of it" mentality and I will unsubscribe. Pinboard has been the same for year

by amix 10y ago

As a long term Pinboard customer I dislike this "I am doing nothing and I am proud of it" mentality and I will unsubscribe. Pinboard has been the same for years and I feel little attachment to the product. I am unsure what to switch to, but Pinterest looks like an interesing and innovative solution.

samastur 10y ago
I feel like I am missing something. You were fine with service and value that it provided until you found out that Maciej is not busy enough running it? Why would you care if you get more value than you pay. Or alternatively, why would you pay for it if it didn't? Are you switching only because of the above reason or is there something missing that you'd like to find elsewhere? I am, too, a long term Pinboard customer. I don't care if Maciej does no work whatsoever in an average year as long as Pinboard works or is fixed quickly when it doesn't. I may be biased, because my wife and I both enjoy his writing and talks a lot so it "feels" like we are to an extent sponsoring that too.
- amix 10y ago
  If you pay for a product on a recurring basis you expect improvements and not only support of the status quo.
  - teach 10y ago
    I suspect that not many people share your view. I don't pay for things expecting that they will get continually better. I pay for things so I can keep using them as they are. Change is just as likely to make something worse as it is to make it better.
  - eridius 10y ago
    Why do you expect things to change? You're not paying for a static product. You're paying for a service, and services have ongoing costs. So your subscription is paying for the ongoing maintenance and running of the service. To put it another way, do you pay for email? And if you do, do you expect your email provider to be constantly "innovating" with their service, or do you expect them to simply provide a rock-solid dependable email service?
  - shadowspar 10y ago
    I keep paying my electricity bill every month, but those a-holes at the utility company never make my electricity any better either!
jalami 10y ago
Pinboard provides a simple service with well defined boundaries that you're aware of when signing up. Iterating indefinitely isn't always the solution, especially when your intention is to keep your problem space small, your project easily maintainable and the tools you provide relatively sharp. Every feature you add you have to either maintain or kill off to the detriment of your users. I'm not saying Pinboard couldn't use a little polish, but I like the principled keep it stupid simple stance: Links aren't hard, don't overdo it. If Pinterest looks interesting, then yeah you probably really hate Pinboard. I think it's a feature that I don't hit those annoying nag walls, get inundated with ads and tracking, load hundreds of images on a page, and require cookies and lots of JS to just browse feeds. Different strokes for different folks.
idlewords 10y ago
I'm not proud of it! But good luck out there.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
danso 10y ago
Pinterest is a significantly different model, with an emphasis on saving visual items (and selling a user's selection choices to advertisers). It's not particularly suited for bookmarking of text/code heavy articles.
keithpeter 10y ago
I am a long term Pinboard user (but one who paid only once). I find it tremendously encouraging that it is possible to manufacture such a business and keep it running as well as it does for so long. I suspect that user idlewords does more than he lets on in his marketing.
csarva 10y ago
I've been waiting for a while now for the ability to change the URL of a pin. It seems the primary key for a pin is the URL and changing it currently means doing a delete+create. Was told over a year ago that a fix would be coming "soon" but doesn't look like any work has been done in that time.
- idlewords 10y ago
  I'm confused because it's been possible to edit a URL for years, in the web interface. Maybe you're referring to an API call?
  - csarva 10y ago
    Sorry, yes, I meant via API.
mcherm 10y ago
I have the opposite feeling. Pinboard does what I want. It seems like it will CONTINUE to do what I want, perhaps for a long time to come! If it could run a little faster, I wouldn't mind that (but maybe that's because I have about 14,000 bookmarks all with detailed comments and extensive tagging), but I happily pay for a subscription JUST so I can be confident that it won't suddenly disappear.

by amix 10y ago

samastur 10y ago

I feel like I am missing something. You were fine with service and value that it provided until you found out that Maciej is not busy enough running it? Why would you care if you get more value than you pay. Or alternatively, why would you pay for it if it didn't? Are you switching only because of the above reason or is there something missing that you'd like to find elsewhere? I am, too, a long term Pinboard customer. I don't care if Maciej does no work whatsoever in an average year as long as Pinboard works or is fixed quickly when it doesn't. I may be biased, because my wife and I both enjoy his writing and talks a lot so it "feels" like we are to an extent sponsoring that too.

amix 10y ago
If you pay for a product on a recurring basis you expect improvements and not only support of the status quo.
- teach 10y ago
  I suspect that not many people share your view. I don't pay for things expecting that they will get continually better. I pay for things so I can keep using them as they are. Change is just as likely to make something worse as it is to make it better.
- eridius 10y ago
  Why do you expect things to change? You're not paying for a static product. You're paying for a service, and services have ongoing costs. So your subscription is paying for the ongoing maintenance and running of the service. To put it another way, do you pay for email? And if you do, do you expect your email provider to be constantly "innovating" with their service, or do you expect them to simply provide a rock-solid dependable email service?
- shadowspar 10y ago
  I keep paying my electricity bill every month, but those a-holes at the utility company never make my electricity any better either!

jalami 10y ago

Pinboard provides a simple service with well defined boundaries that you're aware of when signing up. Iterating indefinitely isn't always the solution, especially when your intention is to keep your problem space small, your project easily maintainable and the tools you provide relatively sharp. Every feature you add you have to either maintain or kill off to the detriment of your users. I'm not saying Pinboard couldn't use a little polish, but I like the principled keep it stupid simple stance: Links aren't hard, don't overdo it. If Pinterest looks interesting, then yeah you probably really hate Pinboard. I think it's a feature that I don't hit those annoying nag walls, get inundated with ads and tracking, load hundreds of images on a page, and require cookies and lots of JS to just browse feeds. Different strokes for different folks.

idlewords 10y ago

I'm not proud of it! But good luck out there.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

danso 10y ago

Pinterest is a significantly different model, with an emphasis on saving visual items (and selling a user's selection choices to advertisers). It's not particularly suited for bookmarking of text/code heavy articles.

keithpeter 10y ago

I am a long term Pinboard user (but one who paid only once). I find it tremendously encouraging that it is possible to manufacture such a business and keep it running as well as it does for so long. I suspect that user idlewords does more than he lets on in his marketing.

csarva 10y ago

I've been waiting for a while now for the ability to change the URL of a pin. It seems the primary key for a pin is the URL and changing it currently means doing a delete+create. Was told over a year ago that a fix would be coming "soon" but doesn't look like any work has been done in that time.

idlewords 10y ago
I'm confused because it's been possible to edit a URL for years, in the web interface. Maybe you're referring to an API call?
- csarva 10y ago
  Sorry, yes, I meant via API.

mcherm 10y ago

I have the opposite feeling. Pinboard does what I want. It seems like it will CONTINUE to do what I want, perhaps for a long time to come! If it could run a little faster, I wouldn't mind that (but maybe that's because I have about 14,000 bookmarks all with detailed comments and extensive tagging), but I happily pay for a subscription JUST so I can be confident that it won't suddenly disappear.