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Comment by webwanderings | Hacker News Reader

What does it offer for $5 a month? Wordpress.com charges as well and the bill runs up to a lot of money for typical bells and whistles needed to run a blog. Google blogspot is still pretty much free all around. Tumblr is the same.

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We think the world still needs a Posterous-like blog engine that is simpler to use for everyone else. Posterous got quite complicated after I left, and I think the world needs the simple version again quite a lot.

The world has an option to sign-up for a free blog through Google, Tumblr and even wordpress.com (though Wordpress.com's free is not free like Google/Tumblr). So what makes you think the world will sign up for $5 service?

I am not here to 'kill' those services. Previously with Posterous we were very aggressive about that. I think people should use the service that is best for them. For some it will be wordpress.com, self-hosted Wordpress, Squarespace, and others.

We're making it for ourselves. It's a long-term project. If we make good software, then it doesn't matter if there are 500 users or 5 million.

> Previously with Posterous we were very aggressive about that.

LOL. I remember that. http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/22/posterous-targets-ning-in-m...

Google, Tumblr, etc. all have investors and shareholders which are trying to turn a profit. I think the idea here (and Garry can correct me if I'm wrong) is that they'll never take on outside funding or entertain selling the company, the sole purpose of the site will be to build something that is sustainable and lasting as opposed focusing on profit.

That's exactly why $5 doesn't seem like a transparent deal right now. It is also not clear who is the target audience here. The average person who would sign-up for a blog, wouldn't shell out $5 so easily, and a professional blogger would look at it suspiciously to begin with (given the extremely early stage). It would be better if that reference to $5 is clarified in-depth, or taken out altogether with a different kind of explanation.

> The average person who would sign-up for a blog, wouldn't shell out $5 so easily

[citation needed]

People are very often more willing to shell out money than we assume. Not all people, but some. See Pinboard.

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