recent LJ controversies, Three Weeks for DW

[charmian]

Been busy translating some stuff, although I am planning to put up some links about the latest Facebook events.

Hmm, at this point a lot of my thoughts about LJ's latest scandal regarding the Driving Revenue/Outboundlinks stuff can be summed up by this animated .gif. Here are tips on dealing with the issue, in case you haven't heard already.

Also, there's a comm on DW dedicated to creating exclusive content for DW for three weeks. Since most of the content in this blog is original and not cross-posted to anywhere else, I guess you could say I'm already 'participating.' Anyhow, this campaign makes me wonder whether it is true that one of the impediments to DW growth is that there is a dearth of original content on DW?

Poll #2875

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

View Respondents

What do you think the main factor impeding/slowing DW growth is?

View Answers

Lack of DW-exclusive content
6 (10.9%)

Dearth of active comms
33 (60.0%)

Invite code system
3 (5.5%)

Insufficient publicity
1 (1.8%)

Something else which I will detail in comments
12 (21.8%)

Comments

[treesahquiche]

Maybe if a really popular fanfic author or social commentator moved base to Dreamwidth, Dreamwidth would get more popular. And maybe the invite code system is bogging things down.

However, I confess that I do like the invite code system. It keeps growth manageable, and encourages users who will actually create content to sign up because another user's referred them and knows them.

Also, there is plenty of DW-exclusive content, and even content that's not DW-exclusive I consume via DW anyway.

What is really keeping DW behind, though, is the lack of active communities. ONTD_political on LJ is thriving and full of people outraged at social injustices all over the world but who find the time to post funny political macros anyway. ONTD_political on DW is just a placeholder comm without much commentary. I fully plan on posting things there when finals are over and I get my grades and discover that I haven't failed life.

Even communities that started out active usually fizzle out just because a lot of activity seems to be centered around personal journals. Like, I'm much more likely to comment on a recipe someone's made on their personal journal, just because they generate more content and more responses from other people, than on a posted-to-once-a-month community.

[charmian]

I think some popular people have moved though? Not really sure.

Yeah, that so far seems to be the consensus. Although, since the main ONTD comm exists on LJ, that probably greatly affects matters, since that's where it gets the userbase from, I would suspect.

That is confusing. I wonder why this is so. Could it be that communities require much more critical mass than personal journals? Certainly people are willing to create communities, but the reasons behind their lack of sustainability seem more curious.

[torachan]

Yeah, for me, I prefer activity in personal journals over comms, so I am happy with DW as it is. But I know people who prefer their primary activity to be in comms, so there is just not enough action on DW for them.

And yeah, I think if more BNFs moved here and closed commenting on LJ, that would give DW a huge boost. Some BNFs have moved here, and quite a few are crossposting here, but I don't think there are that many who have fully moved to DW. And I don't really understand why, especially those who do have objections to LJ and are unhappy with it. If you have a flist of five and all five people refuse to move to DW, I can see staying on LJ despite being unhappy. If you have a flist of a couple thousand, it's probably not going to be a problem for you.

[yvi]

Maybe if a really popular fanfic author or social commentator moved base to Dreamwidth, Dreamwidth would get more popular.

Heh, Dreamwidth's founder is a pretty BNF in SGA fandom :)

[lotesse]

I'd say the number-one thing impeding growth is the fact that we can't read/comment on an eljay flist from Dreamwidth, meaning that many of us have to keep track of multiple reading lists. If there were an easy way to remain socially connected with lj users, I think people would be far less hesitant to move over here.

[charmian]

Looks like that may be changing sometimes, though! Though, I don't really have trouble doing that, as I'm also keeping track of Twitter, Google Buzz, and Tumblr.

[onyxlynx]

Dreamwidth has been in existence for somewhat over a year.

I think people forget that Live Journal did not grow to its present user base in a year.

[holyschist]

I agree 100%. I think DW is at least where LJ was in early 2002 when I started using it.

There are active communities here, for the normal definition of "active". Super-active ONTD-type comms definitely did not grow to present size right after LJ's establishment.

[charmian]

I don't know if it's so much they have forgotten, but that they never experienced it in the first place. In other words, that they were not 'early adopters,' so LJ as it was in 2005-6 or something was their first experience of it, and what they think of as 'normal for a social/networking/blogging service.

[yvi]

Yes, this. I was on LJ in 2003, when they had invite codes to slow down their growth and it wasn't normal for me to have to skip a page on my friends page each day.

[morineko]

since I'm not using DW as a social network, but as a blogging service/non-anon commenting account, I'll address that issue; there's no reason for people to drop their other blog services unless it is indeed LJ or an LJ clone because it's not as friendly to use as the other services. Also, I used to think that invite codes were a great idea to combat spam, but it also discourages non-DW bloggers from commenting here.

[holyschist]

...but you don't need an invite code to comment. You can comment anonymously (and I'm hoping for signed anon comments soon--I think that would help!) or with OpenID. Anyway, invite codes don't just combat spam--they also ensure sustainable site growth.

LJ started out invite-only and that didn't hurt its growth; but I also think DW is growing much like LJ did in its early years, so I'm kind of puzzled by all this why-isn't-DW-growing discussion anyway.

[foxfirefey]

Also, I used to think that invite codes were a great idea to combat spam, but it also discourages non-DW bloggers from commenting here.

Do you think the named guest commenting project coming up will help that? It's a step between OpenID and anonymous, and pretty analogous to the default WordPress commenting setup.

[holyschist]

I actually think DW is growing at a reasonable, sustainable rate; there are plenty of people posting exclusively here, and plenty of active comms. It actually reminds me a lot of relatively-early LJ (I think I arrived at LJ about 2 years after it started?).

Where people are seeing it as not-active is, I think, because they want their entire LJ friendslist and all their favorite LJ comms to move/replicate here. And I don't think that's realistic. DW has a different culture and will attract different people and develop different kinds of communities.

[charmian]

Yeah, I'm not really sure if there IS a lack of exclusive posting, or how important that is. I only notice that it's a common perception that there is a lack of growth, among people I talk to who stopped using DW.

Hmm, I think that IS what people basically want, though. (Or many people) But I think your point is basically accurate, that what is popular and big on LJ will often stay on LJ, and what is more likely is that DW will have to develop completely new 'institutions' and different popular journals.

[syderia]

I think there's also a perception in the non-DW crowd that DW is just another clone, instead of a fork.
The facts that it's less active than LJ, and that you have to either move completely, or keep several reading lists impedes things too.

[syderia]

I think there's also a perception in the non-DW crowd that DW is just another clone, instead of a fork.
The facts that it's less active than LJ, and that you have to either move completely, or keep several reading lists impedes things too.

[charmian]

That could be true.

Yeah, many people seem to dislike the idea of keeping more than one reading list/login.

[yvi]

DW has grown from around 2,500 daily (personal?) posts right after teh start of open beta to about 4,300 daily posts in a year, which I think isn't bad at all :)

[charmian]

I think the perception of lack of growth is relative and also subjective; whether DW seems full or empty to someone seems to depend on their type of usage/what sort of content they're interested in and their history of usage of journal services.

(I think the daily posts include IIRC feeds and comms as well, but I'm not quite sure about that)

[noxie]

What kinda makes me sad is that most comms are so inactive. I don't care if the content is exclusively on DW, I'd just much rather read it here and comment here than on LJ. But I know a lot of people stopped posting their fic here when they didn't get a lot of comments. Personally, I post my fic and art exclusively on DW, and while I really do get less feedback, I have no intentions of going back to LJ. I love the few people in my fandoms who at least post their fic and art on both sites, so that I can read and comment here.

[charmian]

Yeah, that's what happened with a lot of people I knew. There was some posting, then they went back. I think it is like holychist says, though, we can't really expect the same people and comms to appear on DW, but instead expect new ones.

[foxfirefey]

I'm actually surprised they are using that script, which commonly breaks basic website functionality if you're doing anything security wise to not allow random third party websites to run Javascript (which considering the never-to-be-entirely-fixed malware problem in ads is a pretty good idea), on logged in paid users. It seems like a negligible benefit for a lot of possible trouble, and breaks the "spirit" if perhaps not the law of no ads for paid accounts.

I mean, one would think I wouldn't be surprised by these things anymore, but I kinda was! And now I'm kind of wondering what's left--RSS ads maybe?

I don't really have problems with turning unaffiliated links on non-paid journals into affiliate links, but it'd be far, far better for it to be done for all parties in the HTML parser, and not in a really hinky third party Javascript.

[charmian]

They probably don't take people using NoScript into account. Considering the general level of testing which has prevailed in the past, especially, I wasn't that surprised.

RSS ads doesn't actually strike me as too radical or surprising. I don't think people will complain, if it's only plus journals they're talking about.

Ehhh... what else? I guess they could start using affiliate marketing programs in exchange for paid time (like the FB gaming companies got in trouble for). Selling data? Increased virtual goods/customizations? They say that the most effective way of monetizing large generalist social networks is virtual goods. Search ads? Sponsorship doesn't seem to have worked out very well.

Huh, I wonder why they don't do it that way, or why they don't just do the Javascript themselves. Maybe they figured it was more economical? Perhaps OutboundLinks is taking stats and using the data or something.

[jackandahat]

Popping in from /network - I seriously believe it's the lack of comms and activity in comms. I quit participating in LJ, I read and that's it, no posts or comments, and it really frustrates me to see all these interesting things going on in comms I'm part of over there... and not being able to play. And there being no comparable comm over here (I know, the battle cry is "Just create it" - I did and it's totally empty, so. Takes more than one person to make a comm.)

[charmian]

Yeah, that really does seem to be the consensus, which surprised me. (The overwhelmingness of that as the response)

Perhaps that is a problem, though... Like holyschist said above, it may not be 'realistic' to assume that DW will replace LJ's social groups. But yeah, a comm is something that requires more than one person; in fact, a lot of persons. Planning a poll next on what people (well, the ones who think there is a comm dearth) think causes it.

[starlady]

I guess my experience of interacting mostly in personal journals is not typical of LJ, then? Because I just don't understand why people aren't quitting in droves; I wish I could quit entirely, in all honesty, though for various reasons that's not feasible for me atm, and may not ever be.

I tend to think it's the lack of BNFs, really, coupled with "dearth" of comms. copperbadge only gets 1 or 2 comments per post here, which is ridiculous when compared with his LJ; I know when I added him here that I made a deliberate choice to lose the comments from his readers, which are a good portion of the fun, I admit. And a good chunk of the mid-list sff and YA authors are wedded pretty tightly to LJ, since they are all mutual friends with each other; I feel like if Jim C. Hines would move over here, maybe, that might break the logjam.

[charmian]

Personally speaking, although I've participated in comms in the past, in general my main interaction has been on personal journals, both mine and those of others. From the comments here, other people do share that pattern, though.

I think I do understand, however? A lot of people are generally very satisfied with LJ, recent performance problems aside (personally speaking, I didn't even notice the performance problems). So they see no reason to quit. Others may feel annoyed with some of the things LJ does, but not very much, and simply accept it as the nature of LJ. For others, it may be that the reason they are on LJ doesn't exist on DW (or on Tumblr, etc). If there isn't a viable alternative (in terms of content and specific groups, not software), then it doesn't really make sense for them to move.

When I polled people on LJ long ago about what would prompt them to move to another journaling/blogging service, the most popular answer was 'if all of my friends moved and all of the communities I was a member of moved.' Which is somewhat different from 'there are cool people there and neat comms;' according to those long ago results, it seems to be that people want those specific people and those specific comms. There was a post awhile back, though, that sort of said that actually this is not a realistic expectation currently, and that what people should expect out of DW is that there will be (new) cool people there and (new) neat comms there.

That could be. As I was saying to torachan, I think even a BNF would lose a substantial chunk of readers in a transition.

[snippy]

Only some of the people I want to read are on DW, and most of them are also on LJ.

Most of the people who actually read my blatherings do so on LJ. In fact I tried to start a filter for discussing my adventures with perimenopause on DW and only one person opted in; on LJ I have more than a dozen people on that filter.

It was a big leap for most of my friends from USENET to LJ, and they just don't want to jump again.

[charmian]

Yeah, I think a lot of people have had that experience. Some have fortunately had a strong response from DW, but I suppose that simply depends on whether their friends have also moved to DW.

[vass]

I think it's LiveJournal user intertia.

[majoline]

I think it's simply intertia plus the fact that DW is simply a lateral shift. It's not bigger or better than livejournal is yet.

When livejournal starts seriously code-wise lagging behind, this is when DW's population will jump. Right now, it's just early adopters still. Plus, I'd say it took livejournal until 05 to really start being full.

[liv]

I'm maybe not relevant here because I'm not really in fandom. But I barely use communities at all. My LJ paradigm for six years, and my DW paradigm now, is that I use the friending / circle system as a sort of distributed meta-community. I'm way way way more interested in personal journal interaction than communities.

I don't really want to surf randomly to find interesting people to interact with, I want to meet people who are loosely in my social circle and already have friends in common with me, and I found LJ's system of using friends pages as content aggregators incredibly useful for that. That system is in fact the whole reason why I stayed on LJ and didn't move to a far more feature-rich and user-friendly blogging engine such as Moveable Type in the early days, or Wordpress or Tumblr or Posterous more recently.

The downside of that is the huge inertia, almost lock-in. I lost patience with LJ when they first introduced ads, and I got really really sick of LJ sometime around 2008. But I couldn't abandon ship and risk losing the extended network which is the whole point for me. When DW came along, I decided that it was sufficiently geared towards inter-operability that I could take the risk. Seems it's not quite interoperable enough yet; lots of people find the OpenID stuff incredibly annoying or confusing, and we don't yet have the promised feature of cross-site reading lists, so people pretty much have to keep LJ accounts anyway. I can't blame them for not being very active in getting things going here, in the circumstances.

[charmian]

Oh no, everyone is relevant! It's very useful to have a wide range of perspectives.

Yeah, that does jibe with what people have been saying, that while for some users LJ comms are essential, for others they are nearly an afterthought.

Hmm, actually though, Tumblr and Posterous do have a 'friends-page' feature. It is hard, though, I agree, on DW for people who have that style of LJ usage to start expanding their social circle.

Yeah, I think a lot of people in these discussions underestimate the extent to which the avg user finds OpenID annoying/confusing. Out of curiosity, do you think cross-site reading lists will change things a bit, or not?