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I still can't figure out whether Pinboard is insane or genius for pricing it at ~$10/lifetime (or in this case $11/year). I've paid Dropbox about $480 now, and

I still can't figure out whether Pinboard is insane or genius for pricing it at ~$10/lifetime (or in this case $11/year). I've paid Dropbox about $480 now, and it's easily that valuable. But the amount of value I've derived from Pinboard is comparable. The value is "You'll never lose this note, idea, or tool ever again in your entire life. Even if it goes offline, you'll still have a starting point for remembering that-thing-you-saw-years-ago-and-want-again." There's a certain phenomenon in the gamedev industry that was discovered a few years ago. As you price something near zero, your sales increase more than linearly. You'd think that if you drop the price of a game from $50 to $5, you'd get 10x the sales. But in fact, you end up with much more. I wonder if something similar happens for Pinboard.

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bookofawesome 12y ago
Like people would pay anywhere near $400 for a bookmarking service (except you). Come back down to reality.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Well, I didn't pay Dropbox $400. I paid it $9.99/mo. Then a long time went by. Okay, maybe it was a little silly to imply that it was worth $400 over the course of one's lifetime. But I have to live up to my namesake once in awhile. Consider this: What if Pinboard was pay-what-you-want? I wonder if the average revenue would be closer to $40/person than to $10/person. Or, if it's still the same average price, I wonder if it would've resulted in higher total volume (many more sales). It's interesting to realize that, barring some catastrophe, I'll be using both Dropbox and Pinboard in 10 years. That means I'll have paid Dropbox $1,200 and Pinboard $10 (or $110 after the pricing change.) Maybe that's the right price point. I don't know. Monetization is a weird and fascinating subject to me. There's a lot of counterintuitive aspects to it. In particular, it's possible to drive customers away by trying to nickel-and-dime them. Yet it's also possible to turn your back on a lot of money without realizing it. Patio11's gone into this in more eloquent detail than I ever will.
fmavituna 12y ago
A Pinboard user here. When I signed up I hoped there would be nice browser integration but it's just not there. UX for me is just rubbish compared to native bookmarking or to even old delicious extensions. Honest question, why Pinboard is any better than using integrated Chrome bookmarks sync feature? (ignoring the archive feature of Pinboard)
- acqq 12y ago
  It is actually the archiving that is the main benefit of Pinboard. Then tagging and commenting the links for yourself, in order make it easier for you to find it later. The goal is to keep there more than what you'd bookmark. The bookmark is for me "I expect I'll be visiting this often." The link in Pinboard is "my archive of the stuff I've once read on the web that I can need later to refer to, in the state it was as I've read it." That includes the content as it was at the time I've read it, not just the link. And I want to be able to comment it for myself and tag it to easily find it later. If you just need the bookmarks, use the bookmarks.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    This is what I use Evernote for. Why do you like Pinboard better? (Not challenging--actually curious. I've never used Pinboard.)
    - tptacek 12y ago
      I try to like Evernote, especially because I read a lot of PDF papers and annotated screen shots are nice, but I have 3000+ Pinboard bookmarks because they are just much, much easier and faster to create than Evernote notes. I didn't understand what the fuss was about with Delicious and (later) Pinboard, and didn't start using Pinboard in earnest until a year or so ago, but now that I've got archiving running and full-text search, I have no idea what I would ever do without Pinboard.
      - snowwrestler 12y ago
        Thanks. I use the Evernote "clipper" extension in my browsers, which lets me save either the URL, the article content, or the full web page to Evernote. I can tag them, and edit the text to include additional info (one frequent addition--a link to the HN discussion of that article). I'm sort of in similar shoes in that I've been doing this for a while, so I've got hundreds of saved pages and dozens of tags in Evernote. So I feel like Pinboard would need to be much better to overcome that inertia.
wyclif 12y ago
Whoever solves the linkrot problem will become very rich. Pinboard is a service that is eminently worth paying for. It's everything that del.icio.us was meant to be.

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bookofawesome 12y ago

Like people would pay anywhere near $400 for a bookmarking service (except you). Come back down to reality.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Well, I didn't pay Dropbox $400. I paid it $9.99/mo. Then a long time went by. Okay, maybe it was a little silly to imply that it was worth $400 over the course of one's lifetime. But I have to live up to my namesake once in awhile. Consider this: What if Pinboard was pay-what-you-want? I wonder if the average revenue would be closer to $40/person than to $10/person. Or, if it's still the same average price, I wonder if it would've resulted in higher total volume (many more sales). It's interesting to realize that, barring some catastrophe, I'll be using both Dropbox and Pinboard in 10 years. That means I'll have paid Dropbox $1,200 and Pinboard $10 (or $110 after the pricing change.) Maybe that's the right price point. I don't know. Monetization is a weird and fascinating subject to me. There's a lot of counterintuitive aspects to it. In particular, it's possible to drive customers away by trying to nickel-and-dime them. Yet it's also possible to turn your back on a lot of money without realizing it. Patio11's gone into this in more eloquent detail than I ever will.

fmavituna 12y ago

A Pinboard user here. When I signed up I hoped there would be nice browser integration but it's just not there. UX for me is just rubbish compared to native bookmarking or to even old delicious extensions. Honest question, why Pinboard is any better than using integrated Chrome bookmarks sync feature? (ignoring the archive feature of Pinboard)

acqq 12y ago
It is actually the archiving that is the main benefit of Pinboard. Then tagging and commenting the links for yourself, in order make it easier for you to find it later. The goal is to keep there more than what you'd bookmark. The bookmark is for me "I expect I'll be visiting this often." The link in Pinboard is "my archive of the stuff I've once read on the web that I can need later to refer to, in the state it was as I've read it." That includes the content as it was at the time I've read it, not just the link. And I want to be able to comment it for myself and tag it to easily find it later. If you just need the bookmarks, use the bookmarks.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  This is what I use Evernote for. Why do you like Pinboard better? (Not challenging--actually curious. I've never used Pinboard.)
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I try to like Evernote, especially because I read a lot of PDF papers and annotated screen shots are nice, but I have 3000+ Pinboard bookmarks because they are just much, much easier and faster to create than Evernote notes. I didn't understand what the fuss was about with Delicious and (later) Pinboard, and didn't start using Pinboard in earnest until a year or so ago, but now that I've got archiving running and full-text search, I have no idea what I would ever do without Pinboard.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
      Thanks. I use the Evernote "clipper" extension in my browsers, which lets me save either the URL, the article content, or the full web page to Evernote. I can tag them, and edit the text to include additional info (one frequent addition--a link to the HN discussion of that article). I'm sort of in similar shoes in that I've been doing this for a while, so I've got hundreds of saved pages and dozens of tags in Evernote. So I feel like Pinboard would need to be much better to overcome that inertia.

wyclif 12y ago

Whoever solves the linkrot problem will become very rich. Pinboard is a service that is eminently worth paying for. It's everything that del.icio.us was meant to be.