John Baeyens

Alfredo’s comments are quite in line with the vision we have been deploying the last weeks:
“I agree, we should pay, or at least, there should be some sort of free account, and a pro account, with extra functionalities. You could also open a donation account.
This grew too fast, never saw anything like this (out of some p2p apps like napster and kazaa). That means, you guys are doing a great job. You’re famous in brazil. If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to ask.”

Senest has a point, judging on nationality is a very painful option, since nationality has nothing to do with the world PhotoBlog is about. However, when you have 15′ to choose and refuse to jeopardize the quality of a service, nationality is a very easy parameter to act upon in database, certainy if that parameters consumers 95% of your resources. Which leaves us with the point of choice. We had long internal discussions on the topic of inclusion and exclusion:

“It is for sure that inclusion and exclusion are discursive processes. They are no natural laws, someone has got to define them. So you need someone to judge, there is no way out.
First, judging by nationality is very problematic and of no use at all. We all live in a globalized world and it’s easy for anyone not to tell the truth on their nationality. Brazilians may easily declare themselves as Belgian, Dutch, German… Have you thought about that?

We can’t impose this on our users. We can’t sort, like doctors do in war on the frontlines, decided who lives and who not in a wink of an eye. The question really is: do you love PhotoBlog as a nation of visual narratives?

Which is why we dediced to implement the following structure:

Trial members: free
- 10 pictures
- 20 user comments
- categories
- customizable interface
- full statistics

Members: 5€ / 6 months
= trial featurs +:
- 10Mb of picture storage (equals +- 200 pictures)
- 200 visitor comments
- unlimited uploads per day (one by one through browse)
- links to external sites
- maximum 20 favorites

Full members: 29€ / 6 months
= members +:
- 100 Mb of storage + highres
- multiple uploads
- private galleries (individual paswords per category)
- extended ‘about’ page
- possibity to link own DNS (payable)
- community features (picture of the day, unlimited favorites)
- photoblog welcome pack (stickers, camera bag, manual)

The reasoning behind this scheme is that we will not support the current ‘abuse’ of freebies without a slight commitment. The fee of 5€ is a symbolic one, a shoulder knock mentioning ‘we care’, keep building and offering quality. The users wanting to use all the functionalities of the system (full members) pay a fee far lower than the one they would pay for the hosting layer only and get all the functionalities to have an unlimited portfolio and network.
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