Happy 2016!
This year is starting with a roar as the v4 update to 10Centuries is finally entering its Beta Testing phase. One person is having their new podcast hosted from the platform, and the feedback has been invaluable. There's only so much a person can do when building something in isolation, so when other people join in the testing and share their observations, good things can happen. This is what we're seeing with 10Centuries.
Now, it has been quite a while since I've given regular updates on the development of the 10Centuries platform. I'm hoping to fix that with this blog right here, and with some other exciting things that are in the works but not yet released. What I can say, though, is that I'm still on schedule for a limited release by April of this year.
What do you mean, "limited release"?
With the plethora of blogging and social tools out there right now, there won't be a great demand for 10Centuries. Heck, this service is four years old and it's still small beans compared to just about every startup that launched last week! The service currently serves about a million page views a week across 1,820 sites, and this is an impressive number. What I'm hoping to achieve with the v4 software update is to bump the number of weekly page view up to 10-million across 5,000 sites with — hopefully — 150 paying subscribers. As everyone knows, web servers are not free, and I'd love to ensure a steady income to keep the machines up and running. Since launching in 2011, 10Centuries has been 70% funded out of my own pocket. I'm okay with this, as this is my project. But it would be nice to give people a reason to upgrade to a $12/year account.
But how?
Starting from April (and maybe earlier), 10Centuries will be an invitation-only service. People with Standard or Premium accounts and who currently use either v2 or v4 will be able to send invites to 5 people per week. These people can join for free and get full access to the system. There will be some storage limitations in place, of course, but everybody will have full access to the resources in the network. Hopefully, by seeing what 10Centuries can do, people will be encouraged to upgrade to a paid account and contribute towards the longevity of the project.
10Centuries is, after all, a 1,000-year project.
Over the coming weeks, I hope to write more about the various reasons people will have to upgrade and, hopefully, you'll agree that the service is indeed worth a dollar per month if not more. And why shouldn't it be? 10Centuries will keep your information online long after all of the current popular web services cease to exist or evolve beyond what you want them to be. The service may be small, but it's going to remain focused on this singular goal.