[closedloop129]

The main point is not whether it's free or not but that the main page is a landing page. If you visit Reddit, you immediately see content, you are one click away from reading comments. Registering is optional and comes naturally when you want to write a comment yourself.

To convince your visitors, your site is just a landing page. It requires commitment to an account before it is possible to judge the site.

I don't have the experience to judge if that is a good strategy. But if you want to be the Reddit of podcast discussions, then you should show the discussions to the visitors and only request accounts from those who want to write comments.

[wolframhempel]

We had a lot of discussion about it, but it's a chicken and egg problem. We just launched, so there isn't much content to show straight away - and we felt it's worth explaining the concept. As content grows, we want to shift to a "content only" view for the homepage.

It's important to stress that Podbabble doesn't require accounts to view discussions - in fact, you can even comment anonymously without creating an account. If you click on any of the comments on the homepage or choose a podcast via search you'll immediately taken to its discussion page without any barriers.

[sfg]

Get rid of the landing page and get straight to the content.

Create content yourselves to fill the void until it grows.

[rnernento]

I think if you ever want there to actually be content you need a way to grab users and make it easy for them to start generating it.

When you say "it's a chicken and an egg problem" you're spot on. That's the problem for every new social network or user based platform trying to launch. Until you have a ton of users and content I would argue it's the only problem worth worrying about.

[penneyd]

I agree with this, I clicked to check it out and left after it appeared I had to sign up, sure I'm not alone.