Results of The Poll, and is "liking" coming to LJ?

[charmian]

So, last entry I had a poll, and from the poll, I make the following interpretations:

1. The vast majority of people who answered the poll post on DW on a regular basis. I was somewhat surprised, as I thought there would be more lurkers (or readers/commenters only), but apparently not.

2. I was also somewhat surprised to see that so few people posted to LJ original material, and that so many cross-posted. I had thought that there would be more people only commenting/reading on LJ for some reason.

3. Self hosted WP is the most popular blogging option, and when you add in wordpress.com, WP in general is the clear winner. However, Tumblr was much stronger than I expected it to be, which surprised me; it seems to me that not much attention has been paid to the rise of Tumblr in LJ social media discussion circles (IME). Other LJ clones were also popular.

Oh well, was anyone surprised by the poll results?

In other news, looking on changelog, I see that LJ may be putting in Google Analytics and also adding an "I like" feature.

[links to "I like":
http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/8257370.html
http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/8244377.html
http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/8244199.html ]

[links to Google analytics:
http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/8210044.html
http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/8209487.html ]


I wonder if the Google analytics feature for personal journals will be a paid-only feature, or whether it'll be also offered to basic/plus users. If it is allowed for free users, this has some potential to alter user behavior on LJ, as people now will have some metrics of pageviews, and also have referrer data. LJ offering stats including referrers is long overdue, IMHO, and Google Analytics integration is a cheap feature offered by many of LJ's competitors, such as Tumblr, so this really does seem like an easy way to give customers a useful feature.

As for "I like," I'm not really sure what it is (can anyone who codes offer any insight into the mechanics of it?) It seems to be a 'props' system where readers can say they 'like' a post, and the journal owner can see who 'liked' it, and it appears that this function can be enabled/disabled.

I'm wondering if the information on how many 'likes' a post gets, and who 'liked' it will be publicly available by default, and whether, like Tumblr, LJ will make your 'likes' an RSS feed which you can potentially make public. Anyway, I've been long in favor of the 'liking' system, and think it can be potentially quite an asset to a blogging system.

Comments

[charmian]

It's hard to see, because they don't really separate things in the stats, yeah? I know according to external stats, English visits are either stagnant or declining (by some measures, English Tumblr is already more visited than English LJ).

Well, they often drift somewhere, I suppose.

Eh, I have to say that personally (this may be an unpopular opinion) I can see why pro-DW opinions may not be though appropriate in news posts. I am not sure whether the official posts of a company are really good places to advertise competing products, really. Even if the person is not an official rep of DW, these will be seen as advertising, etc. I seem to see more people taking the piss out of completely nutso conspiracists (such as the person who thought Foxfirefey was a secret agent of LJ) or 'look, ok, you think LJ sucks, so why don't you just stop spamming LJ sucks! comments and go to the site you like so much better?' sort of comments rather than straight out "LJ ROXXORS" comments.

Eh? How does Like encourage people you don't know to read your stuff? From what I see (so far) there are no means of making public Likes lists or aggregating a leaderboard of something like 'top 50 liked posts in the past three days,' or incorporating likes into search rankings.

Is there really a difference between old posts and current posts in terms of ad monetization? I'm not really getting the old/current distinction, and I'm not sure the people complaining would really care about the old/current distinction either. (Anyway, so what about people who dislike the current LJ because of ads, yet move to IJ, which has ads as well?)

Well, I don't think it is so much

Really? But

[matgb]

Correct, it's all stats together, so assuming Russia is growing as much as they say its growing, looking at the actual stats that must mean English is shrinking faster, but I suspect they're exagerating Russian growth, etc.

When I'm commenting in News, I tend to be constructive and responsive, I might mention DW but not in a "jump ship have an invite" way; if people find my constructive responses useful, they'll find a clear DW link from my profile and journal, which I think is more useful. And I sometimes defend LJ in there, there're some who attack it for anything while insisting on staying on.

I was under the impression there'd be some way of seeing what you'd "liked" recently somewhere, may've misunderstood.

And it's not that old posts will get more revenue; it's that there's masses of it, a lot in inactive journals. Long tail applies, even though most recent posts will get traffic, the older posts from dead journals also get search hits, and they're just deadweight cost.

Plus, someone hitting a post from a search is slightly more likely to click a google text ad keyed to content, apparently, although that might've changed, it's awhile since I did search marketing.

Think of all those LJ posts going back to 1999, many of them on dead journals that their owners will never look at or touch, but that they can't delete. Putting ads on them will make a tiny sum of money over a period of time, but those tiny sums add up, and otherwise they simply cost when displayed.

[charmian]

I wonder if there is some way using (ethical) bots/sampling that we really COULD see whether there has been a decline in English language LJ?

Eh, I don't mind (not that anyone really gives a damn about what I think, haha) about constructive and relevant mentions of DW, but this whole 'have an invite' thing is kind of pushing it, unless a person specifically expresses interest. Those people who can't leave LJ because their friends are on etc., should actually realize that at this point.... er, don't they have much more chance of influencing their friends to leave LJ, or at least also use other places, vs. influencing LJ itself to change? (I assume their friends are why they are staying on LJ. If not, it is truly mysterious why they continue to stay)

I think whether they are likely to click a text ad or not, IIRC, depends on exactly what the search is for?

Yeah, but I mean, for the purposes of the people complaining, it doesn't really matter, because it's not as if LJ is only putting ads on the dead journals.

[matgb]

Sampling could be done, but the work needed compared to the result probably wouldn't be worth it.

And yes, depends on what the search is for, but clicks per pageview is a good metric, older posts are only going to get search traffic, and those landing are more likely to be prepared to click a relevent ongoing link.

And yes, it matters not, but so many people don't notice the point of monetising the old journals, mostly people who've had no say, and likely no knowledge, that someone is now making money out of their words.

Meh, it's not like it really matters, it's just, y'know, vaguely relevent.