[jhorman]

Yeah, we go back and forth on that. We only use it currently to send you a confirmation. You can still login immediately though. OpenID is definitely in the road map.

I suppose we could allow you to login to a more restricted account (no spamming since we do have email/sms out support) until you validate in some way.

[rantfoil]

PG's advice is right. Take down all the fences -- you have less than 20 seconds to impress the user into staying on your site.

It's an attention economy -- asking for signup/login before providing real value = squandering that attention.