Right after the GR announcement, I tried going to a competitor of this site and it took about a week for my free account to bubble up to the top of the queue.
That is great news Samuel but I gathered from various speculative posts that GReeder membership was in the millions. And figures(presumably exaggerated) suggested that one of your competitors picked up several hundred thousand in the days following the initial announcement.
I guess I don’t know what your goals, aspirations and technical limitations are but this approach would not seem to be the way to go if you wanted a serious slice of that figure.
Anyway, I’m sure you are much more well aware of the real demands out there and have balanced the pros and cons of a flood of freebies vs a stream of paying. As I said in the earlier comment though, I guess this is the one shot to get it right.
Or you could pay for premium and get access immediately.
Asking to freeload, then complaining about the service isn’t going to endear you to either the developers or the community.
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I’m a paying member so I don’t know the issue that is being experienced. But, this is a once in a lifetime chance to get a chunk of the GReader user base. Once people settle on something they are likely to stick with it… Surely the idea is to get as many free users trying the service out as possible and then they convert to premium once they realise they love it. (this is what happend to me a few months back now)
The performance of NewsBlur seems fine at the moment, are these restrictions really needed?
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Hey, I pretty much agree with most folks here. To reiterate: NewsBlur is a paid service. The free accounts exist as indefinite trials for premium accounts.
The queue works by admitting a new free user every minute. So 1,440 accounts ahead of you = 24 hour wait. I sometimes up the interval to every 2-5 minutes, but I think I’ll stick with the 1 minute interval.
And if you’re wondering, the paywall is working incredibly well at converting free to paid users. I’m hitting a nearly 10% conversion rate, whereas before it was 2%. My goal is to have all free users convert to paid, so if you’re feeling down about being a free user, that’s intentional. Upgrade and you’ll be a real NewsBlur user.
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