Giganews moving to 365 days retention

[hidalgo]

I am quite surprised that nobody noticed the news where Giganews is said to move to 365 days retention.
It is not announced on their website though...

Here is the news

*ttp://www.slyck.com/story1838_Giganews_Announces_365_Day_Retention

*ttp://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/10/giganews-expanding-retention-to-365-days-plus-limited-time-50-off-special-pricing/

another news, XS news dutch provider would be moving to 400 days retention...
*ttp://www.slyck.com/story1839_XS_News_Announces_400_Day_Retention


Now, seems the race for the highest retention has started. This I assume will track more and more people to NG, as for many NG were less attractive due to short availibility compare to other methods.

Isnt this race for retention and gaining more and more users, giving more and more publicity to NGs, gonna end by killing them? Meaning authorities would start putting their attention on them....?

Any thoughts?

Thanks and Bye!

[grishnakh]

Cool story bro.

Yes, eventually these kinds of news will kill usenet (in the warez sense).
But I suspect it will never gain the same popularity and attention as torrents, because usenet is not free.

[BigH]

do we really need 365 days?

Giganews should be concentrating on lowering its prices to Astraweb's levels

[Funkin']

Giganews should be concentrating on lowering its prices to Astraweb's levels

Agreed. They've had to have lost a ton of subscribers to Astraweb. But Giganews seems greedy, I personally don't think they'll ever lower their prices.

[Darth_Duane]

They have lost a lot of users on this forum, but in general how many do you think they have lost? Probably not that much. Your average giganews users has likely been using them for years and just assumes their service is still the best and doesn't bother looking for alternatives. I certainly would never have known about astrawebs recent rise to the top if I didn't come to these forums.

I'm betting Giganews is still doing a brisk business and will for some time until your average user figures out they are being taken.

[Sometwo]

do we really need 365 days?

Giganews should be concentrating on lowering its prices to Astraweb's levels

Good point... I use Astraweb which currently has 210 days retention which I think is fine, especially considering it's only $10 a month!

[sdwillie]

I'm betting Giganews is still doing a brisk business and will for some time until your average user figures out they are being taken.

They get a lot of business handling news services for ISPs. D2D is upgrading to 400 days, announced maybe a month ago. It'll be ignored because right now they have half the retention of Astra and GNews.

I thought it funny that GNews had 240 day rentention for less than two weeks, watched it fall to around 180 days before acknowledging they blew it, then recovered only half that retention before announcing another upgrade. They weren't delivering what they were selling, and then they announce an upgrade. Right now they're 143 days short of that 365 day mark--August 9 (side note-they acknowledged not meeting the advertised 240 days right XMas Eve so it wouldn't be noticed, and they're still 20 days short). Since they were growing toward that 240 advertised retention at a rate of around 1 day retention/2 calendar days, anyone want to take a guess at where they'll be on August 9? Or September 29--the date last year they 'completed' 240 days retention? How about will they make it by Christmas?

IMO this is simply GNews trying to grow subscribers so they can pay for the upgrades, plus to deflect attention from the fact that recovery/retention growth has been pathetic--40 days retention in 83 calendar days (longer than that really--when they announced falling short they were 2 months short of what they were advertising). And I wouldn't be surprised if they were had to quit advertising 240 day retention, so this is the best they could come up with.