Email posting should be free

[bodhi]

Title:
Email posting should be free

Area:
posting, email, pin, blogging, free, paid

Summary:
My apologies if this hasn't already been requested 6,392 times.. but truly the #1 obstacle for me getting attached to using this site is inability to use email posting as a free feature.

Description:
It may make sense from a let's hold off a feature to get people to buy phase, but considering that every single blogging site known to chimp and mankind provide this as a feature, and in today's fast mobile world, most of us wish to post on the go and perhaps edit "on desku" at leisure.

without this feature as free, i suspect many prospective trial users will just not get as hooked into DW.

OT: frankly I'm quite perplexed and disappointed here. I don't really get what DW is for - is this like GM's Saturn? Building a Better LiveJournal? Because it's not really doing that for me.

Sorry, and thanks for listening.

/regrets

Poll #1068 Email posting should be free

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
4 (11.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
12 (33.3%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (52.8%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Those are the cons to having email posting for free.

The pros would be: possibly more content being posted, which DW needs. Additionally, DW is often blocked at workplaces, making posting quite difficult otherwise, and this would help with that. It could encourage dual LJ/IJ/OtherJournal citizenship by giving people the ability to post to their other journal, whether paid or free, through email by DW's automatic crossposting mechanism. I think that email posting is a bit more of a power user feature or something used out of necessity--that less people will use it than, say, things like icons, and throwing open the gates won't lead to most people using it (but I could very much be wrong on that). Additionally, we are already adding unique, significant incentives to paid account upgrading like personal journal search, and have plans for more, so I don't think it will gut sales.

I feel weird in thinking that maybe this might be a decent idea--my usual response to requests like this is in most instances a kneejerk no, and I have to think a lot to get beyond that. But I also know that one of the top complaints I hear about DW is the lack of posting or content, and so after thinking a lot about it things that could help, even a little, become more attractive if they're not going to cost the service overly.

[denise]

Yeah, I'm kinda flip-flopping on whether or not this would be a good addition to the free account level -- there are two things (this and comment editing) that I've been vaguely considering as potential free account features, but I really do want to hold off on making any changes to our account levels until paid accounts are more appealing. Search was a big'un, but there are so many LJ paid features that we just don't have that I'd like our paid accounts to be a bit more beefed up before we start turning some things free...

[bodhi]

i say "stay the course" even though i hate that expression lol

i agree this is all still very new and you'll know what's right cause you guys are all smart and observant folk!

[foxfirefey]

Well, we have one month and a week or so before mark can just tear into the code like a bat out of hell and I think paid features will spike dramatically then. So maybe in a few months things like that will be safer to open up to free accounts. (I think the comment editing is a nice touch but less of an issue--before comment editing ever came around I was quite adept at the delete-report rigmarole. Email posting in some instances has very little equivalent yet, although Posterous can definitely fill the gap.)