What sites would you pay to use? • Hacker News Board

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#31

Post by baddox » Wed, Apr 16, 2008, 11:56 PM UTC

cstejerean wrote: post #8

I would definitely pay for GMail and Google Reader, unless someone can find me a similar service (web based and with awesome support for keyboard shortcuts). AFAIK the competition doesn't even come close.

A good alternative to Google Reader is simply visiting the sites you want to :-) I'm being sarcastic, but I honestly don't get the point of using a web-based RSS reader, I've always just bookmarked and visited the sites I desire to check.

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#32

Post by angstrom » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 12:41 AM UTC

Mint.com

It needs more features, but so far it's the only tool I have that is able to synch with all 12 of my financial accounts without having to manually download/import OFX or MNY files.

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#33

Post by dcurtis » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 12:43 AM UTC

andr wrote: post #13

I would actually be thankful if most sites charged me, as I'd waste less time on them.

You mean, you'd either pay and spend as much (or more) time on them, or you'd never visit them again and not subscribe.

Sadly, there's no middle ground.

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#34

Post by aflag » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 12:59 AM UTC

I wouldn't pay for any of those sites. I'd pay for google if all search engines started charging. Also, I'd probably end up paying for some e-mail service if gmail would charge (it might not be gmail).

I probably would pay for wikipedia if I had to, as well. Maybe planetmath.org.

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#35

Post by andr » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 1:10 AM UTC

dcurtis wrote: post #33

andr wrote: post #13

I would actually be thankful if most sites charged me, as I'd waste less time on them.

You mean, you'd either pay and spend as much (or more) time on them, or you'd never visit them again and not subscribe. Sadly, there's no middle ground.

I'd be interested in paying per use or per minute. Something 8aweek could do and give proceeds to charity?

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#36

Post by tristian » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 1:16 AM UTC

I'd be happy to pay for Rescue Time and Hacker News, but having said that I'm not sure that I would pay for either if I hadn't used them for free first.

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#37

Post by RK » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 2:04 AM UTC

yan wrote: post #14

Wikipedia. I'd pay a pretty penny for that.

They do accept donations.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#38

Post by Goladus » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 2:12 AM UTC

I wouldn't pay for gmail. I'd go back to using Thunderbird.

As for the rest... extremely hard to predict because if all the most popular sites charged money the dynamics of the web would be completely different.

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#39

Post by pchristensen » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 2:47 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #27

The problem with this question is, when you think about it, one big reason all the popular free web services ARE popular is because they're free. So pretty much my answer to any of the sites I use would be, I might be willing to pay if I couldn't find an alternative, yet at the same time, I'd probably never be using any of them in the first place if they weren't originally free. However, I would NEVER pay for social…

That's a great answer. The question was an attempt to see what's entertaining but not valuable, and what's so unique that there's no good substitute for. For instance, there are other web based email clients (not as good as gmail) but there's no other community I've found as great as HN. Since I'm sort of technologically isolated, the community here is a godsend that's the most stimulating entertainment I get outside of my wife and kids.

Re: What sites would you pay to use?

#40

Post by pchristensen » Thu, Apr 17, 2008, 2:50 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #31

cstejerean wrote: post #8

I would definitely pay for GMail and Google Reader, unless someone can find me a similar service (web based and with awesome support for keyboard shortcuts). AFAIK the competition doesn't even come close.

A good alternative to Google Reader is simply visiting the sites you want to :-) I'm being sarcastic, but I honestly don't get the point of using a web-based RSS reader, I've always just bookmarked and visited the sites I desire to check.

Have you tried using Google Reader or other? I used to bookmark and revisit, but there were two problems - too much time visiting sites when there were no updates and it was too much hassle to visit sites with rare updates (like pg essays or Yegge novels). Now I follow ~150 feeds and it takes less time than I spent following 10-15 with bookmarks.