[gessha]

Whenever I share something that requires a login like reading a Twitter thread, my friends say they find the initial tweet interesting but they can't continue since they don't have/don't want to make an account. It adds friction with finding utility in a site. They need to be really motivated to continue using the website. Counterexample is TikTok: anyone can see a TikTok, no login required.

As another example, I was interested in Matter/Readwise reader apps. Matter has a very limited freemium version, Readwise doesn't. I tried Matter, I liked it, gave them my money. Maybe Readwise is better, who knows, but I didn't even give it a chance since I wasn't able to check if it's going to be useful for me.

Maybe I'm a cheapskate so I don't want to "screw" myself with paying for a month of Readwise and checking what it offers or maybe the freemium model really works better.

[khet]

Registering is free though. People use their email to signup for newsletters all the time. So I feel like it's a fair ask to signup to read some really high quality curated articles with an unparalleled reading experience.

[thealistra]

I feel that in HN crowd it may be easier from registered to paying than from unregistered to registered. You know, tech privacy-aware crowd.

I also bounced after getting signup clicking #programming FYI.

Either make those 3-5 categories free or make them with like 24h refresh because so far I saw that your page has 5 not interesting articles and wants me to create an account.

This is too little to give you my precious email address or apple throwaway mailinator email.

From my perspective I still have a backlog of 200 items in my rss reader for today. It would be better for you to show slightly more value of what your product gives us. As from the comments it seems that it was interesting for a lot of people to at least try and open the page!

[interestica]

Yes, but a user has no inkling that they will have to sign up to keep reading. It feels dishonest and they pull a 'revenge-bail'. You don't get to decide if the articles are high quality or unparalleled reading experience -- let them make that determination.

[wpietri]

> Registering is free though.

In money, not in time.

> So I feel like it's a fair ask

You do. But a lot of the people you'd like to sign up don't. You can argue all you like here, but it's not going to change many minds. And it certainly won't change the mind of anybody who just sees your home page and bounces.

So given that you're not going to win the argument, what's your next step?

[JohnFen]

> Registering is free though.

Sure, but that's not the only thing that makes registration a high-friction event. For instance, any time I register for something, free or not, I am also aware that I'm probably getting my name on a marketing list (and probably sold to other lists) as well. So I'm not registering for anything unless there's already a very well-established value exchange for it.

[Michelangelo11]

OK, but how do I know I'm getting "really high quality curated articles with an unparalleled reading experience"? I can't see what I'd be getting unless I sign up, hence the issue.