Pinboard needs help!

[merrily]

Hi friends -

Dropping back in after a long absence to post a note about bookmarking site Pinboard, which needs your help! I'm posting to amplify this request from owner Maciej Cegłowski, in case some of you (like me) set up your Pinboard account with an old email that you may not check frequently.

Some background:

Many of us migrated over to Pinboard for fanwork bookmarking after Del.icio.us imploded (post Yahoo! sale). I was extremely grateful for the way that Maciej consulted with fandom to build the site so that it would serve us well. (Here's an awesome talk he gave in 2013 about the process.) He basically earned goodwill for life from fandom.

I was an early adopter, and paid something like $9USD in 2009 for a lifetime subscription. (Maciej offered this tier for a few years, then switched to new users needing to pay an annual subscription fee.) Apparently 2/3 of the Pinboard fanbase are also early adopters who paid a single lifetime price. This means that the site is making very little money.

Pinboard generates juuuust enough revenue to be sustainable ... in a stasis sort of condition. However, as with any webware, some growth is necessary (code updates!), and some would just be nice because why not improve as users needs change?

The Ask

Maciej is asking Pinboard old-timers to voluntarily convert to an annual subscription. You can do that here: https://pinboard.in/convert. There are many choices - I went with a 10 year fee, both to save money (since I'll definitely continue to use it) and also so that I could offer him a cash infusion right away since he has things he'd like to do, including hiring a developer.

Please consider doing this! Pinboard has been a quiet staple of my fan life, and I use it daily. I know many of you do the same (because I follow you there heeeeeyyy). Help it stay viable!



Here's Maciej's letter in full:

Hi there,

My name is Maciej, I run the bookmarking site Pinboard, and I’m writing to ask for your help.

You joined the site back when there was a one-time signup fee. Back then, charging for bookmarking online was unheard of, and the fee was more of an anti-spam measure than a revenue model.

In 2015, I changed Pinboard over to a subscription site, where even “basic” users (who don’t use the archiving feature) have to pay an annual fee. But I did not make this change retroactive, since that felt like going back on a promise.

Today I'm asking you to voluntarily change the way you use the site by going to https://pinboard.in/convert and converting your account to a ‘modern’ one, the kind you have to pay for every year.

Let me explain why:

First, it will allow me to do more active development on the site. As a solo developer, this has become difficult as the site gets bigger and older. I not only run and maintain all the code, but I also install and fix the physical hardware, keep up with the various patches and breaking changes at every level, run and test backups, and try to keep up with big changes in the way the web works (like the huge move to javascript, which is hard to archive).

I would describe my work like single-handedly running a restaurant in an old château. It’s cool and fun, and the ambiance is great, but occasionally the soup is served cold or not at all because I have to chase a bunch of bats out of the kitchen, or replace a collapsed beam, while the diners sit and wait. This is no fun for either me or the diners, who rightfully complain that it ruins their dinner.

Having more paying users would let me hire some dedicated carpenters and and bat-chasers that would let me focus on the cooking.

Second, it’s become rather hard to have two populations of users, one of whom pays annually for a service that the other gets for free. Right now, about 2/3 of Pinboard users with basic accounts are people who signed up, like you did, in 2009 or 2010 with a one-time payment. The remaining 1/3 pays $22 a year. I have noticed this has created some feelings of annoyance in the paying group, odd expectations in the one-time group, and a general confusion about pricing policy.

Third, there are a bunch of new features I want to get out, like making the site look decent on phones, better tag editing, PDF uploads, an improved crawler (that is not stymied by javascript-heavy sites) and above all a more functional API to encourage third-party developers. Even if you don’t care about any of these features, some of them (like the API redesign) will make the site much faster for everyone. But to do that, I need to hire some help, since the site is too big for one person to maintain and do feature development for at the same time.

I even have a person in mind—a great Romanian guy who interned with me in 2013, and is a longtime fan of the site. He’s capable, effective, and I would love to work with him again. And as a way of thanking you, converted users will get access to these features first.

Since this is Pinboard, you are also welcome to ignore all of the new stuff and just use it the way it has always been.

So my pitch is this: if you are getting more than $1.80/month of value from using Pinboard (which is what the site costs these days), I ask you to convert to a regular account as a token of your support.

Tradtionally, a company in my position would take outside investment, or bring in a VC with a big story about growth, or pivot to a new market. But I much prefer for it to the site to remain independent, ornery, and self-sufficient. I take my work seriously and want the site to be around for the rest of my professional life.

If you can help me do that by putting things on a firmer financial basis, then I’ll be grateful to you! And I promise you will see the benefits.You’ll even get emoji flair (optional) to go next to your username. It’s a win/win/win/win proposition.

That URL again is: https://pinboard.in/convert

Let me know if you have questions, or comments, or find this request deeply offensive, or deeply inoffensive, or anywhere in between. Right now I’m reaching out to just the oldest of old users, and would be grateful to hear your thoughts.

Kind wishes,

Maciej Ceglowski
(maciej@ceglowski.com)