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Comment by rwhitman | Hacker News Reader

Ok, but from an economic perspective - if Topix is not collecting email addresses, how can they monetize all these people in the long run? From a marketing & user retention standpoint isn't that throwing away a pretty valuable channel? What monetary gain does 780 random anonymous non-threaded text-only comments bring?

(Just really curious, I've recently started trying to see things from this perspective and I'm interested in hearing discussion from the business model end)

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What kind of value would having a forum user's email address give you? Unless by "monetize" you just mean "send them activity notices so they'll come back", it sounds like you want to spam them.

Personally, I recommend monetizing internet forums by selling people things and having them buy them for money. You can keep interest by just being interesting.

I don't think sending your users emails should be considered spam. Mailing lists and email upsells can be very lucrative, even if you're not emailing users immediately, an email address is a valuable thing to be leaving on the table.

what is does is increases the "skin" a user has invested into the site, whereas before, they wouldn't even consider registering

I can tell you that there are a lot of sites I use that ask for my email address and I'd rather not give it to them, and I can tell you that I give them crap. I.e. I give them an address I've set up specifically for the purpose of giving it to sites that require one. There's an awesome, self-explanatory site called 10minutemail.com that I love using; sites can ban their domain (I think some do) (but it's a new one every month), but there's no way a site can tell the difference between my real Gmail account and my crap other Gmail account. And I think a lot of people use similar tactics.

In other words, requiring an email address doesn't mean users will give you their email address. I only give my actual address when I want to. Meanwhile, it's a pain when a site requires one, and sends me an email with a confirmation link. I feel alternately clever (ha, I outsmart them) and sleazy (this probably isn't what they intended), and always annoyed, when I do this.

I recommend making emails optional (but if it has a definite use, like for resetting a password, then explain this to the users). I was happy, kind of exhilarated actually, when I signed up on Hacker News and all it asked for was a username and password; the email address is a text field that one can fill out when desired. I think I remember it explaining that this address wouldn't be visible in your profile; it would just be used for notifications about your account, or something. Take note.

mailinator.com is brilliant for this.

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