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

[charmian]

I have no idea whether this is a popular expectation, really, but it did seem to a lot of people in, say, fandom, that one day 'everyone' was using MLs (or in the case of my circle of friends, pitas.com and self-hosted Greymatter/MT installations) and then all of a sudden everyone had gone and moved to LJ and abandoned their old blogs. So it was indeed for some people that their social circle *did* up and move to LJ. Now, in reality, things are not that simple; some people didn't end up moving, etc., but this is a popular perception of what occurred. Of course, at that time, LJ was not really a new (chronologically) service, although it was new to the people using it.

I don't know, aren't most of the people using DW (whether they can be said to have 'migrated' in the sense that they no longer use LJ or use it less, or simply in the sense that they use both LJ and DW simultaneously) people who were already using LJ, or one of its clones? Many of the major new features of DW are geared towards interoperability solely with LJ/LJ clones.

[holyschist]

Yeah, I know it can *seem* that way--my fandoms moved from Y!groups, a lot of my friends moved from Diaryland. But it's a more complicated migration than that, I think. Hmm, perhaps diagrams are in order.

I don't know, aren't most of the people using DW (whether they can be said to have 'migrated' in the sense that they no longer use LJ or use it less, or simply in the sense that they use both LJ and DW simultaneously) people who were already using LJ, or one of its clones? Many of the major new features of DW are geared towards interoperability solely with LJ/LJ clones.

I'm not sure. My reading list is split between people who left LJ entirely, people still using LJ but in a limited way, people mostly using LJ but DW as well, and people who only use DW or DW and other non-LJ services.

But I also actively went looking for people here beyond my original LJ reading list. I have no idea how representative this is of the people using DW as a whole, and I'd be really interested to find out.

[charmian]

Yeah, but I mean, afterwards the Ygroup was dead/forgotten, right? (at least by the people who moved on) And the people no longer posted at Diaryland. (The people who moved, that is) From a subjective standpoint, then, the 'core group' or the 'main action' moved, leaving a much diminished group, if any, behind. So, I think people are expecting that to happen, and what is occurring right now isn't fitting that pattern, or isn't yet.

Heh, well, if you have any diagrams, bring 'em on.

So are the people who only use DW/DW+non LJ services former LJ users, or did they never use any kind of LJ clone at all? Well, I did do a poll, and it seems that most of the people were crossposting to LJ/using both DW and LJ at the same time, but that isn't really representative either, probably.

[holyschist]

It depends on the social group? The fannish y!groups I was one went pretty dead, whether due to LJ or something else. The history/SCA ones have a good percentage of people who use them AND LJ, as well as people who don't use LJ (but may have a personal website or participate in some forums). And those people are using y!groups and LJ in different ways. I don't think y!groups really fills the same social role as LJ, though.

They would be imaginary fake diagrams, I'm afraid, not science!

So are the people who only use DW/DW+non LJ services former LJ users, or did they never use any kind of LJ clone at all? Well, I did do a poll, and it seems that most of the people were crossposting to LJ/using both DW and LJ at the same time, but that isn't really representative either, probably.

I wonder if a poll for site development purposes from DW would get a more representative cross-section?

[charmian]

Yeah, I think it definitely depends on the social group. However, I think many of those y!group fans do recall that experience, and that is what they are basing it on. LJ is different from y!groups, definitely, but comms for example do play some comparable roles. The whys of that transition, though, were IMHO very much influenced by the different capacities of LJ and the way it really was a new paradigm of interacting, which definitely provided extra pull.

I am sure it would!

[holyschist]

I think there's a huge split between people who are comm-focused and people who are journal-focused, and it's not a fan/non-fan split. I'm much more of a journal-focused person in both my fannish and general geek personas, so I think that's part of why I'm not really missing LJ and other people are.

[charmian]

It is interesting; I never noticed this split in LJ usage before. Even when I was big into anime/manga fandom on LJ, I was never that comm focused. I would belong to comms, but usually not for very long, possibly because I get irritated if I see too much content that doesn't interest me.

[holyschist]

Fannishly, I'd mostly use tags to find out what I wanted (or scrolling/memories in the pre-tag days). I'm still mildly active in some non-fannish LJ comms, but they're not the OMG Super Active sorts of comms that a lot of the comm people seem to be missing. Like, to me, if a comm gets a post more than once a week, and these posts are not always the same people, it's "active". I think a lot of the comm people are defining "active" as "multiples comm posts a day".

[charmian]

These comms were on my flist back on LJ, so eventually I removed them when the percentage of posts I was interested in dropped.

I don't know, I think what people are complaining about are entirely dead comms: see this comment, for example. I think activity also depends not only on post volume, but on comment volume as well, also. If there is one post a week, with no comments, the comm looks pretty lonely.

[holyschist]

Oh, yeah--but there are a zillion entirely dead comms on LJ, too. It's just that there are more comms overall, so there are numerically more active comms. (And the last couple times I've gone looking for comms on a particular topic at LJ, they either didn't exist, had never been posted in, or only existed in Russian...and they weren't that weird topics. LJ doesn't actually have EVERYTHING in the internet.)

I wonder if it would be possible to get at some stats for comms on both sites to see if one has a greater percentage of dead comms (although that might be somewhat skewed on DW by name-squatting).

[charmian]

True, LJ isn't the entire internet, and there are certainly topics of mass interest which it is weak on... however, I think to someone using both sites, if DW doesn't have a live comm on a topic LJ does have several active ones on, they may feel dissatisfied.

[holyschist]

Totally understandable!

[elena]

it did seem to a lot of people in, say, fandom, that one day 'everyone' was using MLs (or in the case of my circle of friends, pitas.com and self-hosted Greymatter/MT installations)

My first fandom-ish blog was hosted by pitas, then by antville.org. Both of them (and diaryland, and a few other platforms) are nowadays more or less the Internet journaling equivalents of coelacanths :D

I moved to LJ in 2003 (with an invite I exchanged for one of deadjournal.com, where I have an early adopter account) because I wanted to comment on the journals of people who had moved from pitas to LJ.

[charmian]

Yeah, that was pretty much how things worked out IME. So basically, I think a lot of people have that kind of expectation, that there will be a transition.