I recently had the opportunity to meet with the guys from Giganews and discuss their premium Usenet services. Over the last few months as the economy has weakened I’ve read lots of posts and emails from those that think Giganews is priced too high in comparison to competitors. Others comment on their reliable service and high retention through the years. Most of these conversations seem to end wondering where Giganews is headed. I asked a number of related questions and got some candid answers I didn’t expect including Giganews planned retention gains.
Here are some highlights from our conversation:
We discussed the retention issues that hit in late 2008. It is no surprise that not long ago Giganews retention was moving in the wrong direction. While I understood the cause was growth in feed size (amount uploaded to groups) Giganews response caught me by surprise. They fully acknowledged the retention issues and steps taken to grow retention to new heights. Then came the question many of us want to know. We’ve seen retention announcements from Highwinds (NewsHosting, UNS, etc.) spooling to 250 days retention and Astraweb spooling to 270 days. Where is Giganews headed and when? I expected the typical “big things to come” general response. Instead I got a solid answer. Giganews is currently spooling to 365 days binary retention. How about that. A year of binary retention. Those of us old timers remember when a week of binary retention was big news. Now it’s going to be a year.
Another topic of conversation was Giganews new special giving new customers a 50% discount off their first three months of unlimited access. This is a nice improvement to their previous special and a good opportunity for those new to Giganews to test their services. I would personally like to see account prices come down a bit. Maybe offer SSL and 20 connections free with all accounts.
We also discussed their expansion into Hong Kong to serve the Asian Pacific region. It appears Giganews goal is to not only provide better service and grow their customer base in the region, but also to improve Usenet as a whole from the content added from users in that region of the world.
So where does that leave us? I hope with a better idea of where Giganews is headed. There were a few other notable off the record comments on things to come. Without spilling the beans the guys at Giganews are working on some cool projects that go beyond the retention gains.
I’ll be interested to see how others take the news of increased retention and other projects in the pipeline as they are announced. There is no question that Giganews isn’t a budget Usenet service but they seem determined to increase service levels and stay ahead of the pack.
