Social>>>Media

[charmian]

More information on revised LJ advertising policies

And, vito_excalibur talks about why she is going to stop posting to DW: she crossposted to LJ, and all the discussion stayed on LJ, so she sees little point in continuing to post at DW. (LJ crosspost here)

She goes on to say: "So DW improves the medium part of the LJ clone social medium, and it doesn't matter that much, because the social part is much worse. I think it might still come to work, FSVO working; but the window is narrowing on that possibility." [I think FSVO='for certain values of'?]

She argues that DW has mostly removed negative aspects of LJ (as it currently is), rather than adding things which would convince people to switch. DW as it stands is not enough of an improvement to get people involved in fandom to switch to DW, it seems. I would argue that this is correct for many people on LJ. DW is simply not enough of an upgrade for most. Possibly this is because the people left at LJ are there for the content/social, not for the media, and that people who choose blogging/social media software based on the features have already left.

Anyway, when reading her post I was confused why V_E argued that DW only had a limited amount of time to get people to switch, and I asked her about this point. So it seems that she has eventually concluded that the idea of an LJ fork is itself flawed.

I think to some extent this may be so, but that at the same time, many people are using in fairly large numbers message boards, IRC, etc., even though this tech has been obsoleted, so DW I think can still have a larger stable userbase that it does currently. (It's sort of plateaued at around slightly under Insanejournal's daily userbase)

More notes:

I'm sure LJ will do something very stupid again at some point; however, I'm not sure that this will spark a mass exodus. A lot of people were very indifferent to the previous incidents, and the recent Best Buy ads have provoked irritation, but much less so than they might have in the past. Especially, as new users who have never known a non-ad supported LJ come in (LJ like all online services experiences natural churn. There are always new people coming in and old ones leaving), they may be far more tolerant of ads.

Aside: Personally, I don't believe that LJ's past incidents have been "concerted efforts" to drive certain people away, even if they had that effect. I am sure that even they could have done it in a much more effective way, and IMHO, had they been serious about banning certain groups, people would have actually respected them more had they simply sat everyone down and said "ok, we've made a decision not to host this kind of content any more."

I also seriously doubt that LJ will implode soon. So far it seems SUP of late has been following a benign neglect practice w/ regards to policy, and recent attempts at increased monetization and the increasing weirdness of the news posts have met with little reaction, relatively. If anything, I predict that LJ will simply decline due to "natural" factors rather than outrage at SUP's actions.

Comments

[tcpip]

This comments are entirely correct. Many months ago, on a similar discussion, I argued that it was a better option to buy-out Livejournal than set up a competitor because the greatest value in LJ was not so much the product (which has some excellent features, and DW have improved), but rather because of the existing social network. For people to make a big shift they would need to have something that has all the feature of LJ and much more.

[tcpip]

s/This comments/These comments/

[charmian]

Oh... if you recall, where was that discussion?

Eh, but I really don't think that buying out LJ is at all feasible? LJ was sold to SUP for millions of dollars, and what SUP was buying was the Russian userbase and content.

[tcpip]

Long time ago... the noljads community iirc. I agree, it would certainly be difficult to buy it out and SUP did the purchase for the reasons you have mentioned.

DW I think has done very well with its xposting features. That will help it a great deal in the interim period whilst the userbase picks up. It may indeed take years, but I do think it has a high chance of long-term success.

[charmian]

Honestly, though, I think it's rather impossible. Because of the high Russian adoption, the valuation is too high for regular users to buy it out.

Hmm, so actually you think you disagree with V_E? I think a lot of things can happen, so depending on which features DW introduces and what SUP does, DW might experience growth.

[tcpip]

I think you're right on the buyout option which is a shame.

I agree with the reasons that V_E has given, but not their conclusion. Even if the overwhelming majority of social networking is happening 'over there', I am more than satisfied with the cross-posting features of DW. There is really no need to abandon DW just because the comments are happening on a cross-posted 'blog.

[charmian]

I guess I have to say it's a personal choice. I don't crosspost anything I post to DW to LJ, as a rule, because those two blogs are on different subjects. I had a feeling, though, she was not criticizing the crossposting feature itself, but saying she was disappointed at the audience reaction.

[foxfirefey]

Maybe it was this entry?

http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/70042.html

It would be nice to buy LJ out, but ever since the sale to Six Apart, the price for it has been set unachievably high. I think 6A's initial layout was estimated to be around $25 million or so, and SUP's to be around $30 million. With only 2-2.5 million active accounts around those time periods, I just don't see how the numbers pan out for a single concentrated gathering of funds for a purposed buyout.

[tcpip]

That could be it :)

Alas, I must agree. The buy-out of LJ is not going to happen whilst SUP has a high price based on the specific demographics they want; it's worth something to them, it's worth less to everyone else.

Buy the non-Russian content!

[frith]

Buy out LJ! Now there's an interesting idea... but instead of buying out all of LJ, perhaps DW could purchase just the users of, say, LJ North America, UK and Oz? As is often harped, SUP is interested in the Russian demographic. I'd expect that they'd be willing to part with non-Russian content for much less than 30 million.

Re: Buy the non-Russian content!

[charmian]

Does it really work that way?

The Russian and the US stuff are on the same servers. I don't think it is possible (although someone might prove me wrong) to split stuff up like that). What is possible is perhaps something like what SUP used to have with 6A back in the day, an agreement to run and profit from US operations. However, that would also be expensive, probably, and since 50% of US revenue is based on ads, if you wanted to abolish ads you would have to drastically increase subscription revenue.

Re: Buy the non-Russian content!

[frith]

From what I've read, I get the feeling that there is already a rift, that the Russian side gets treatment/features that are not apparent on the non-Russian side. Nonetheless, I'd expect it would be simply a question of pointing the addresses of non-Russian users to a DW address. I recall that 4 or 5 years ago the addresses of all LJ users were changed from a livejournal.org/username format to a username.livejournal.org one. There is the question of username duplication... Hmmmm. Solution: dreamwidth.org/username.livejournal.org and an offer to buy a rename token (to slow the flurry of rename requests and to recoup some of the cost). Another potential problem: loss of journal style in the transition. That would earn quite a bit of ire.

Re: Buy the non-Russian content!

[charmian]

Wait, what does this have to do w/ DW? DW is already not using the same fork as LJ. The software is definitely different, and I don't think DW has any intention of purchasing anything from SUP. Also, I seriously doubt DW has anywhere near enough $$$ to make these kinds of deals, whatever they may be, with SUP.

Re: Buy the non-Russian content!

[frith]

My suggestion is to fold content from LJ into DW, and by choosing content that is of little value to SUP, make it affordable. _That_ is what this has to do with DW. 8^) It's marrying established content to a new platform (DW). But you are saying that the software has diverged to the point where DW can no longer import journals from LJ?

Yeah, I really doubt that DW is rolling in dough. It has enough to hire mark... SUP would have to practically give the non-Russian users away.

Re: Buy the non-Russian content!

[charmian]

Well, what I mean is that DW seems to have no plans to do this. It's not what their agenda is, you see? Since DW has never stated any plans to do this, I don't see how they come into this, is what I'm saying?

No, it's possible to import journals. However, this is an action DW users take themselves. You can only import a journal you own. Mass-importing other journals is an entirely different story, as LJ users own their own journals (IANAL, but this is my understanding). Importing people's journals against their will would spark a lot of outrage.

Mark isn't "hired," he's the co-owner.

Frankly, I don't see what would be in it for SUP to "give them away" (no matter how that would be done) without a big cash payout. Any kind of technical change that would involve work for SUP would cost them money.

Re: Buy the non-Russian content!

[frith]

You are right on all counts. I was proposing the partial buy-out in the 'what if?' spirit of the discussion. Dreamwidth as a buyer seemed to be a best case scenario in this pipe-dream.