(no subject)

[charmian]

If you use NoScript, you may be facing some issues with Dreamwidth: http://dw-nifty.dreamwidth.org/7596.html?style=mine

Also, a poll on paid features and some notes about the state of Dreamwidth as a business have been published on dw_biz:

http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/4516.html


I was surprised how popular a bound book was among the people answering the poll. I guess I've never really harbored any desire to have a bound copy of any of my journals, as of my posts contain errors or outdated information etc.

I was also surprised that more people clicked that they bought a paid account because they wanted to support DW than that they did because they wanted the features. (On the other hand, the poll is not very representative of DW as a whole because obviously, free users vastly outnumber paid users, and this is not reflected in the results.) For me, it makes sense to click that option because I am not integrating my usage of DW with LJ, and thus many of those features are not useful; also, I only use one icon regularly, so that I have a hundred icons is irrelevant to me. (Actually, this is one thing I dislike about DW's pricing. I know that icons are one of the most expensive things, so I view charging $35 dollars for a package including a hundred of them is a fair price. But I wish I had an option to be a paid user, but buy fewer icons. In that respect, LJ's practice of having icon add-ons makes more sense to me.)

I think in some ways, ever since the advent of Disqus and IntenseDebate, as well as FB Connect and Twitter login, Web 2.0 services are little by little chipping away at some of the advantages of the LJ commenting system. However, no widely used service that I can think of allows a multiple icon system like Livejournal. This, I think, one of LJ's key competitive advantages.

On the last question, a plurality of users picked increased integration with other services as the most attractive feature. This was unsurprising to me, as recent discussions I've had often focused on how important integration was to DW users.


Also, it looks like Mark has created a demo of an image posting system. See it here

Comments

[charmian]

Yeah, I hope that Flickr is more upfront about these things in the future. So most people delete their photos and do not keep a copy of them on their hard-drives, I gather?

a) Hmm, if it's for the community that people are staying rather than because of the difficulty in downloading, that's somewhat of a different issue. b) Actually, from what I've heard, server space is not really a problem; the real problem is the bandwidth.

Huh, so why cannot a photo community be distributed, if it is not an issue of private photographs?

[holyschist]

So most people delete their photos and do not keep a copy of them on their hard-drives, I gather?

I have no idea what most people do, but I think partially it's that people may want to preserve metadata. Some people probably use their Flickr account as a backup (I don't, since there are so many ways to circumvent their download protection and so many people who think it's not theft if they credit--I don't upload full-res images anymore).

a) I think it's probably some combination of factors, but I only know why I have issues with Flickr in some respects but stay anyway. b) Not surprising.

Huh, so why cannot a photo community be distributed, if it is not an issue of private photographs?

I think it's some combination of private photographs--communities often have "friends-only" type settings for photos, and Flickr's not unique in that--group stuff like communities and photo pools and favorite sets that are easier to participate in if everyone's using the same service, the ability to add photos to favorites to look at later, etc. Many of these would be much more difficult and possibly impossible in a more distributed photo community.

[charmian]

Hmm, but that argues that even if Flickr DID allow a download, it wouldn't matter much because where would the users upload them? They would need to find another software/website which recognized the metadata formats.

Sounds like the same problem re: social networking. A lack of interoperability and open, widely used formats.

[holyschist]

I guess it depends on why the users want to keep the metadata. And it might be something that could be put into a generic XML format and then converted or even uploaded as-is. I don't know.

[holyschist]

Here's an interesting discussion about Flickr Pro accounts: http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/331e0f78/does-anyone-know-what-percentage-of-flickr

It suggests that they form a much larger percentage of site activity than they do of total number of accounts. And I suspect the same is true of the poll in dw_biz--the most active site users and the users most likely to watch dw_news and dw_biz probably have a greater percentage of paid users than the site as a whole, and probably generate a greater percentage of activity and content than their percentage of accounts would suggest.

Hmmm. This is some data I would really like to see:

-Percentage of paid users
-Percentage of posts made by paid users
-Percentage of comments made by paid users
-Percentage of paid users watching dw_biz
-Percentage of paid users watching dw_news

[holyschist]

A casual study with some interesting results:

http://www.thejuicycow.com/2007/08/29/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-flickr-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

[charmian]

Well, if they really do have 60% of active users, they must be doing incredibly well.

I do think it's true that those tendencies apply, yet it still seems rather odd to me that it's so overwhelmingly paid/seed users answering in that poll. I mean, I would have been surprised if it were over 40% paid, but instead, the respondents are 70% paid!

[holyschist]

Nono, I don't think it's saying that 60% of users are active, or 60% of users are paid, but that of active users, 60% of those are paid. The paid users could still be <5% of the total users, and <10% of users could be "active".

It's really hard to nail down stats, though, since Yahoo/Flickr doesn't release them--so I think all of these estimates are based on people counting samples of recent activity and whatnot.

[charmian]

Oh, that's what I meant. If they had 60% of active users as paid. Since the inactive users don't really cost that much, (especially with 50% of photos being private), then they are doing really well. IIRC LJ paid users never were about at 3.8% of active users when Six Apart bought the company.

[holyschist]

I guess it depends on how the person counting defined "active"--probably based on some sample of "latest photos", so it might bias more towards super-active users. I suspect only Yahoo could get a true count of accounts with activity in the last year or whatever.