Robert Cialdini, in his book “Influence” said:

If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment. Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand.

Which is why so many people resist taking a stand.

Yep, this is why doing a landing page, which converts is so difficult. People do not consider it difficult to sign-up. Going on record is what makes it hard.

Is there anything that makes people more likely to go on record?

I tried to compile my knowledge on the landing pages in the blog, I published here. If you read Cialdini, he explains a lot of interesting tactics of influence in general.

I like tactics like "use few words" and "ask only for what you need".

But getting people to go on record -- that's really hard.

Will read the Cialdini book.

Absolutely, this is what I learned. Many writings on landing pages focus on call for action. Question to ask here is, how come it's so difficult to get people to perform very simple action?Is the act of typing in email with browser autocomplete is that hard? No. What's hard is to get the commitment.

Yes. What is hard is getting people to care.

myspace landing page is pretty freakin awesome: https://new.myspace.com/