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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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?

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[holyschist]

I think it's an unrealistic thing to expect, though, and I've never seen it happen for any new blogging service. And I don't think DW--any more than Wordpress or Blogger or Tumblr or any other service--is dependent on mass migration from another service for growth.

[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.

[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.

[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.