I totally agree with the question "Do I really need this?"
No I don't. But there is an idea behind asking those information.
I don't care about their data. But I do care about them and I would like to see people who care about the app which will try to solve some problem of them. I would like to have a passionate user base(100s) rather than collecting 1000s of emails. I would like to talk with them, one by one and ask them if we can help them.
Some people told me there are similar tools, some asked me questions, some shared their love and interest to use the app. Some said "Landing page sucks" which I agree a lot! Some asked for a job.. I wouldn't get this if I was only asking their email address.
173 people even wrote something to remarks. Only 60 people did not write their names ( some of them did not write their names but put some remarks )
448 people filled out their name. Only 1 of them has name-surname "In Valid" and his email address is avalid@email.com I bet he is a bot.
First name - Last name fields are not required. People who follow Hacker News are already experienced Web users who knows clearly a sign of Required Field, they might easily skip it, but they did not. The rest of the emails are already indicating their name and surname.
If they don't care and they don't request an invite; which means I would be more efficiently spend my time.
It might have a better conversion rate without asking their name, but I don't care about the conversion rate that much.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against what you say, I am trying to rationalize the behavior with data.
It sounds like you have valid reasons for your rule-breaking, and that's a-okay by me. If we all followed the rules all the time, there wouldn't be any progress.
It also sounds like you're deeply passionate about what you're doing, which is great.
My only caveat to that is that it's hard to have both success at a grand scale and a dedicated group of users at the same time. If you're not looking to be successful, or aren't looking to strike it big (ala Facebook or Twitter), there is of course nothing wrong with that, but for the type of service you're operating, you'll have a harder time tracking statistical trends with a smaller audience I'd suspect, which could make the service overall less effective.
As you might know, without committed users Twitter would not have # tag and @ sign. They have talked with their users at one point. They don't have an option. You have to.
What their advantage right now, Facebook already have 3200+ employees which also means users that they can get feedback.
Twitter has the same nature. But believe me, they are talking a lot with their customers(advertisers), not with you or me, coz we are a small fish in the ocean. Our lives are not dependent on FB or TW, if we find a better app, we will sell them in a second.
That's also why I believe 37signals, Evernote, Dropbox are much more valuable brands than Facebook & Twitter. They might not have 100s million of users, but if you can't monetize, it does not matter
We will be going Freemium, but in a way that Evernote does. Not in FB or TW modal.
I don't care about their data. But I do care about them and I would like to see people who care about the app which will try to solve some problem of them. I would like to have a passionate user base(100s) rather than collecting 1000s of emails. I would like to talk with them, one by one and ask them if we can help them.
Some people told me there are similar tools, some asked me questions, some shared their love and interest to use the app. Some said "Landing page sucks" which I agree a lot! Some asked for a job.. I wouldn't get this if I was only asking their email address.
173 people even wrote something to remarks. Only 60 people did not write their names ( some of them did not write their names but put some remarks )
448 people filled out their name. Only 1 of them has name-surname "In Valid" and his email address is avalid@email.com I bet he is a bot.
First name - Last name fields are not required. People who follow Hacker News are already experienced Web users who knows clearly a sign of Required Field, they might easily skip it, but they did not. The rest of the emails are already indicating their name and surname.
If they don't care and they don't request an invite; which means I would be more efficiently spend my time.
It might have a better conversion rate without asking their name, but I don't care about the conversion rate that much.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against what you say, I am trying to rationalize the behavior with data.