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Should Threddie lose the signup wall?

I've been giving this a lot of thought lately. Threddie launched to critical acclaim, such as it is, back in August but it flatlined ever since. Other than a few new features, the biggest change was probably when I erected the signup wall around it. Mind, there's nothing different between this wall and the one employed by the likes of 37Signals: since the app is geared towards businesses, not consumers, it makes sense to ask users to provide the company (or organization) name and choose a subdomain.

But.

The fact remains that Threddie was never as successful, in conversion rates as well as brainstorm activity, as when it was at its most basic: just an easy "start a new brainstorm" form on the frontpage, asking for a title and a briefing. Sure, you still had to signup for an account after creating the brainstorm, but it was way easier back then: just a name, an email and a password.

So...

I'm left wondering. Maybe I should split the app again. The premium version working just like now, each account under its own subdomain, and the free version requiring as little user information as possible (perhaps none at all, like Etherpad). That would be a return to the format that seems to have been the most popular, while keeping all the extra features available for premium users to enjoy.

Something to consider.

New: Add your logo or a custom background to Threddie

You can't really have a business-oriented product if you don't allow your users to customize its interface a little bit.

That's why, starting now, Threddie offers users of the Plus, Premium and Ultimate plans the ability to upload their own backgrounds or logos, as well as select from a variety of color themes. These settings are available in your "account" page.

Cheers,


Pedro Candeias
brainstorming . simplified

Welcome back, Freemium! No hard feelings?

So, here's the thing.

I'm a single founder bootstrapping a startup with the meagre resources at my disposal. Sometimes I'm bound to feel the pressure and do something less than clever. For instance. After a week mulling over whether or not to remove Threddie's free plan from the range, I decided to do it.

I wrote a nice blog post about it and, feeling very good with myself, went on Hacker News to share my thoughts. I'm pretty much unknown over there, so my post left the front page very fast, but it was enought time for a brief exchange to take place. As you can see here, I was pretty dismissive of the pro-freemium arguments. Thing is, though, there's nothing like bouncing an idea off of someone to really grok it.

As I slowly came to realize, the reasons I enumerated for dropping the free plan were actually a bit off. I don't mind at all getting feedback from people who aren't my predetermined target market (businesses). In fact, I quite enjoy even the strangest ideas people send my way. They're a good way of getting "out of the box" and looking at threddie from a different angle. From that process, great breakthroughs will eventually occur.

What was really bugging me was the fact the both the Free and the Solo plans were offering people an experience that was completely at odds with what Threddie was supposed to be about. This was due to Free and Solo limiting the number of account users to one, forcing them to resort to inviting guests in order to brainstorm. This was wrong for a few reasons:

  • Guests cannot use the brainstorm update alert system, unless they spontaneously choose to enter their email address in the brainstorm subscription box. Which is rare. This lead to brainstorms that lasted only one or two rounds of replies before dying off.

  • The only way to invite guests is by manually sending them the brainstorm URL and password. This is fine for the occasional use guest access was designed for, but it gets old pretty fast if it's the only way to invite people. Users, on the other hand, can be invited with one click.

  • Guests are unable to edit their posts.

  • User accounts are pretty awesome in comparison, and my Free and Solo plans were keeping that awesomeness locked away from people. Which is no way to make them like Threddie.

So I made another decision. I'd reinstate the free plan, but increase its user limit to three. That way, even that plan would be able to fulfill Threddie's goal of simplified brainstorming. In return, I'd remove the ability to upload files and lower the brainstorm limit to just ten. The Solo plan, which in hindsight sounds pretty silly, would be axed.

So I did.

By having a free plan, I get to share Threddie with more people. By disabling file uploads, I save myself the hosting expense (maybe later, when I'm profitable, I'll add some space for free). And by limiting the number of brainstorms, corporate users are encouraged to upgrade. In the meantime, everyone gets the (except for file uploads) complete experience.

I think it's a win-win scenario all around.
So, welcome back, freemium business model. All is forgiven :)

[UPDATE] Tags, nested threads, reply editing & more

Another round of updates is here!
There’s a ton of new stuff. It’s mostly under-the-hood stuff with very little bling factor, except for a few very shiny exceptions:

  • Nested threads
    One of the premises behind Threddie was to allow conversations to branch out and flow naturally. This required the ability to nest threads inside one another, which is trivial from a technology perspective but poses a significant design challenge. Visually, threads nested inside other nested threads can get really messy really fast. With this latest version of Threddie’s User Interface, though, I think I cracked it. When writing a reply, you can now choose between “reply below”, which adds your comment to the end of the current thread, or “reply here”, which starts a new nested thread under someone else’s post (or posts at the end of any existing one).
  • Tags (replacing “cases”)
    In this day and age, limiting tagging to a single “case” makes little sense. Therefore, I replaced cases with proper tags. Brainstorms can have multiple tags, of course.
  • Edit your replies
    It’s amazing the kind of features you have leave out when they don’t work perfectly and time is limited. Apple left cut & paste out of the iPhone until iOS3, for instance, and I left reply editing out of Threddie until now. But that’s fixed, so now users can edit their replies at any time. Note that guests still can’t, though.
  • Gravatars
    Eventually, I’ll start integrating Threddie with other services. Gravatar is the first one, and it makes brainstorms look great.
  • Import/Export brainstorms
    For those who for any reason want to backup their brainstorms, or move them between accounts, it is now possible to export them to JSON format and then import them again. Please note, though, that imported brainstorms don’t retain user information beyond names: other than the brainstorm creator, everyone appears as a guest. Files are also not being exported at this point. But it’s a solid start on the road to true data portability.


That’s it for today’s changelog.
If you spot any trouble, please do let me know.

Cheers!

Goodbye, Freemium

When I first launched Threddie, back in August, my only objective was to prove the concept. Try to get as many people as possible to try the app, see if anyone liked it. Back then there was no dedicated sign-up page, just a big form on the front page from which you could start your first brainstorm. It worked. With minimal publicity, in three months over 500 people gave Threddie a spin.

I talked to as many of them as I could, trying to get feedback and know more about my potential customers. I also set up an event log to keep track of Threddie’s key performance indicators.

Based on user feedback and KPI data, I can make three important observations:
  • 90% of free users never really do anything. The vast majority of brainstorms contain some form of the word “test” in their titles, and see zero or minimal activity.
  • Free plan users come in all shapes and sizes. Their usage cases vary wildly, as do their suggestions. Many ask for features that go beyond the scope of a brainstorming application, are very sophisticated technically, and present a high risk of increasing UI complexity.
  • Premium plan users are mostly companies. They all have a tendency to make the same suggestions and requests, revealing very similar usage cases. They all seem to want security, branding options and to keep the user experience simple. Their most sophisticated requests, like sub-threads, were already in my roadmap anyway.


It couldn’t be clearer than this. Premium users are easier to develop for, easier to support, and they pay me money. They’re my customers. So they deserve all my attention.

Therefore, I’ll be dropping the Free plan from the “signup” and the “account upgrade” pages this weekend. Existing accounts on the Free plan can keep using it, this change only affects new signups and plan upgrades.

Maybe later I’ll reinstate the free plan. You know, when I’m cornering the market. Until then, though, I’m keeping it real.

Thanks for reading!

[UPDATE] Autologin + Improved notifications

Time for another little update:
  • Users can now have Threddie remember their logins, for added convenience.

  • Brainstorm update notifications are now switched on or off at the user settings page. This setting applies to all brainstorms a user is participating in and defaults to "on". This replaces the old subscription system.
Defaulting notifications to "on" is a big step towards making Threddie work better. I was noticing that brainstorms no one subscribed to tended to last for only 1-2 rounds of replies. After that, activity would tend to trail off even if the Op kept replying to people. Brainstorms with lots of subscribers would fare a lot better, hence the change.

Edging closer to home

Over the past couple of months, I've been hacking away at a completely new engine for Threddie, an effort which culminated in the release of a much more capable and polished application. I'm very pleased with the results, and consensus among the users I've spoken to seems to be in agreement.

At this point, it's very tempting to go back to the press and try to get some more exposure. In fact, I meant to do so. Thing is, though, using Threddie in real life situations I'm realizing that there are a couple of details that still need some work.

It's possible that I'm just suffering from founder's anxiety, postponing launch until the imaginary day when everything feels perfect. On the other hand, I'm very much aware that people aren't going to write about Threddie every other week. I'm nowhere near the point when my updates are newsworthy per se, which means it's very important to make each (re)launch count.

That's why, for the moment, I'll continue in stealth-ish mode. There are a few little updates that would really make a difference, some of which I really need to do something about:

  • Start calling discussions by that name instead of calling them brainstorms. This isn't just a cosmetic change. "Brainstorm" is a far more specific concept than "Discussion", which unnecessarily limits Threddie's perceived scope.

  • Improve the notifications system. Notifications, as it seems, are a very big problem all on their own. People need to know what's going on if they're expected to participate. Right now, brainstorm discussion participants need to opt-in to get email notifications of new updates. This may sound correct, but the fact is, most people never bother. So discussions tend to last only for one or two rounds of comments. This is broken. Notifications should be switched on or off at user profile level, instead of discussion level, and be set to "on" by default.

  • Right now, participants are either account users or guests. This is fine in principle. Trouble is, proper user slots are expensive and guests, while unlimited, are impossible to reliably keep track of (and notify - see the previous point). This issue really kicks in for the free and solo accounts. One possible approach to this problem is to create a third entity, labelled simply "participant", similar to an account user in all but the ability to start or manage brainstorms. Participants should therefore be registered in the system, with email addresses, names and passwords (possibly randomly generated). This is, of course, a source of attrition. Requires a lot of data input when first setting up an account with Threddie. But, by implementing social login systems in the future, like Facebook Connect, Twitter's OAuth or Open Social, this may be mitigated.

I guess this is why David Heinemeier Hansson famously said "It's never going to be less work" when referring to startups. The one thing that's true about all startup milestones is that there's another one just down the road.

My focus right now is on improving the notifications system. When that's done, I'll see exactly how much of a difference it makes. If it really improves the experience, then I'll launch. If not, I'll look into the other items on the list above.

Let's get to work!

[UPDATE] Multiuser, file attachments, new design & more

Finally! After two months and a full engine rewrite, Threddie is packing some serious heat. Take a look at the goodies included in this update.


New features


File attachments
Now you can add files to your comments. This is great news if you need to share stuff with other brainstorm participants, like an image or a document. There's no limit to the amount of files you can attach per post, as long as each one is under 10Mb and they don't exceed the total amount of storage allowed by your Threddie plan.


Multiuser:
On Threddie Pro or better, you can add other people as users under your account, which makes everything easier. You can invite users to brainstorms with a single click (no more writing each person's email in an invitation box) and control who can access what. Users also have the ability to start and manage their own brainstorms.


Brainstorm "cases"
Think of Cases like folders and you get the picture. Cases keep your brainstorms organized and make browsing past activity easier.


Your own subdomain
Now everyone has the right to their own Threddie url, even those with free accounts. Threddie urls look like this: http://youraccount.threddie.com/


New layout
  • Threddie's interface was given a bit of polish and sharpened up a bit. One of the big differences you'll notice is how the brainstorm page now fills the whole width of the page. This is because the layout is now "liquid", letting you resize the discussion window according to your needs. Make it narrower and let the discussion flow on the side of your screen while you're focused on something else, or maximize the window and really engage the brainstorm. The choice is yours.
  • Most URLs are now automatically turned into links which open in a new window.
  • Comments now have a bit of color coding to let you know at a glance if they come from you, an account user or a guest.
  • The "brainstorm settings" button, previously called "admin" and hidden in a dark corner of the interface, is now much more visible (top left of the page, right under the brainstorm title).


What's coming next

One of the main things still missing is the "search" feature. But I'm working on it. Other than eventual bug fixes, the next big addition to Threddie is very likely to be the ability to search brainstorms and users.


Over to you

Hope you like these new features. If you have any comments, questions or feedback, feel free to send them my way. I’m always eager to hear what you have to say.


Cheers!

Bootstrapping Blues

Earlier today I was chatting with Mark Asquith on twitter about Threddie's progress. During the conversation I said something along the lines of "this would all be done by now if I didn't have a day job". Then added "I can see why some people apply for funding".

Indeed, there are times when the idea of seeking an investor is tempting. It would be great to get some seed funding and live off it for three months while focusing entirely on Threddie.

Not going to do it, though. Mostly because investors don't grow on trees, which means finding and convincing them takes time. By all accounts, wooing angels is a full time job. So I'd be back to square one.

I guess I'll just keep bootstrapping.