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.

[charmian]

Well, I think I can certainly understand if they don't have objections to LJ. But I suppose if you have a couple of thousands, you are likely to be someone who really values having a large audience as well.

So far the results of this poll are interesting; I didn't think that it would be so uniformly 'dearth of comms.' The BNF/popular person thing may also be related to the comms as well. If a person starting a comm is not very popular/lacks social capital/reputation, that might be an impediment to making a comm flourish.

[torachan]

Right, but if you are popular enough to have thousands of people following you, IMO, there is a much higher chance that they will be willing to read you wherever you go. So I don't think they're likely to lose a large chunk of their audience by moving to DW, because the audience will follow them. I mean, these are people whose fans will follow them to new fandoms, so why not a new journalling platform?

[charmian]

I don't know; in the past, I saw a few people leave LJ temporarily, and even though they were BNFs, they received far fewer comments. IIRC the platform was WP, though, so I think they wouldn't lose as many if they went to DW. On the other hand, though, I'm not a BNF/popular LJ user who has tried this, so I can't really say.

[eruthros]

Yeah, I tend to prefer activities in personal journals, or really specific comms, so I am also happy on DW!

I think, though, that part of the impetus for three weeks for DW for some folks is using it as encouragement to post to comms/keep comms active, so that it's not just a challenge addressing a lack of DW-specific content, it's also addressed at encouraging posting to communities, so!

Re: some BNFs, I suspect that's it's partly BECAUSE the whole flist of thousands wouldn't move with them! Like, I moved pretty much wholesale, stopped posting to lj (though I had brief visions of posting different content there, it hasn't happened), and partly that's because I had nothing invested in the numbers of my flist, just some of the people, and many of them were going to move/crosspost. So maybe I lose the twenty people who were inflating my numbers because they friended me in 2005 and didn't unfriend me before leaving fandom - oh well! (Some of the people making up those thousands must have left fandom/lj, but they still show up on the profile, so even if "everyone" moved for a BNF they'd still lose some numbers, I think!)

[torachan]

Yeah, I do think they'd lose some, especially some who aren't actively following them anymore (I mean, hell, even I have probably 20 people on my LJ flist or more who are dead journals and I have like 250 friends of), but the bulk of the followers, the ones who are active and commenting, those would probably comment on DW as well.

[charmian]

I think that might be so, about the BNFs. Maybe also, though, with those folk, it could be because it's not about the numbers, but about the key people. If their closest friends won't move w/ them, or the people they most value, then they have less incentive to close off comments or stop cross posting.

[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 :)