@moonmehta but anyone can already join without pay, all they need to do is to connect a blog and post from there.
@pcora The next question that comes up is where should I have this blog that connects here? And how to do so? It’s not intuitive. These solutions are only good for people like us who are savvy enough. People at large tend to think they should be able to post where they sign up.
@moonmehta Okay, I totally see your point. But then, I think about this kind of as a managed blog. If you are not tech savvy enough to figure those things and run your blog to interact here, you pay Manton 5 bucks to run it for you. It's not a bad trade off and it's definitely not expensive. I fear about what happens when there is a free tier, that just ends up taking so much of resources without any compensation. Either the service fails, or it becomes ad-supported.
@pcora I hear you on the concerns about a free tier eating up resources, which is why I suggested an invite-only media-less route. But $5/month is a lot for an activity that most people don't consider to be uniquely important, especially when other networks give it for “free”. $5/month is especially more for developing countries; for example, people here in India don't even pay that much for YouTube Premium.
@moonmehta that is fair. same thing for many ppl back in Brazil. Even if you try charging .50c, they will walk away immediately. One thing that could be doable, is to have a handy guide showing ppl how to connect here from Mastodon. Easiest of the routes.
Either directly following them here, or having them also creating accounts here, plugging the RSS, etc.
@moonmehta @pcora Maybe a middle ground like $1 or $2/month for a more basic tier? Not free, not $5. I'd guess too that would help screen out bots, spammers, etc.
I suppose a part of this equation is how interested is Manton in actually growing Micro.blog? He might be happy with how it's going as is. Anything beyond that is just extra support work for more users, more strain on servers.
Perhaps too there might be ways to more involve current micro.blog subscribers as as community volunteers of a sort. I think it's been suggested before by the team that they'd like to have a few folks help curate. Many micro.blog users already help with support via the help forums and informally here in comments.
I love the idea of bringing in more users, making micro.blog more accessible to less techincally inclined or lower income users. And if the goal is community well, cultivating a culture of increased community-based aid would also be beneficial.
@moonmehta@micro.blog @pcora @denny@micro.blog
What would a “supporter/lite tier” paid option look like on micro.blog?
- Just the abilty to interact and comment with posters in the “blue area”? (But that can kinda be done for free from any ActivityPub/Mastodon compatible account anyway so this would also give someone a new fediverse address too, I guess…)
- Enable some personal “digital garden” features without the need for the blog portion? (ability to track books read, TV/Movie watches, exercise done, etc… Good for those of us who self-host our own blogs but not that part and don’t feel like building it out ourselves)
- Maybe the above plus RSS feed reader/aggregation? I’d pay US $2~3/month for that.
Anything else y’all can imagine?
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