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Posterous's PR efforts, speculation on LJ's future
As part of their marketing/feature efforts, Posterous has this thing where they're publicizing their ability to import from different services, and highlighting the benefits of Posterous. As I said earlier, their choice of Ning is baffling from a technical perspective, but pretty clever from a marketing one. (Basically, a Ning is like a social network/community site, not like a blog) Tumblr makes more sense, however, and since Tumblr has made the philosophical choice not to have comments as a feature, they can easily differentiate themselves there. Vox also makes more sense, but they don't seem to be doing the locked posts.
Basically, Posterous has a lot of interesting, and even unique features, and I like many aspects of their design, but I don't use it that much because a) I already have a Wordpress installation, b) none of my online friends use it, and c) I haven't found that many blogs on Posterous to read. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see whether Posterous gains many converts from their efforts.
Also, on the dw_news comm, they're asking for suggestions in marketing DW. I think, as I said in the comments, there's a big difference between marketing to current/former LJ users, and people are not LJ users or do not enjoy using the LJ software: the marketing approaches will have to be very different there, and I suspect content rather than features might be the attraction.
In other news, here's some interesting speculation (in the comments) on the future of English-language LJ. (Stressing, of course, that it is simply speculation)
Again, I wish to state clearly that this is pure speculation. Personally, I find the scenario of SUP totally abandoning English-speaking operations to be highly unlikely, especially in the light of their investment in ONTD. (Not only did they hire Brenden, a maintainer of ONTD, but they also introduced special features for ONTD.) Also, while the US side probably brings in less revenue than the Russian side, I doubt they would want to say good-bye to all of it by totally forgetting about maintaining their advertisement deals and stopping selling paid services.
Also, it's not monolithic: even if LJ stopped having a physical office in CA, and got rid of Livejournal, Inc. (which is a US company), that doesn't mean that they still couldn't have US-based employees. Also, even if there weren't US-based employees, it doesn't necessarily meant that all English-language communications would cease, either.
Anyway, what's more mysterious to me is why SUP continues to keep the servers in America. Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to run them from Russia? Or are the logistic and technical costs of moving them so daunting that it wouldn't make sense? Or is it that the Russian audience of LJ prefers that they be kept in America? (I've heard rumors to this effect).
Basically, Posterous has a lot of interesting, and even unique features, and I like many aspects of their design, but I don't use it that much because a) I already have a Wordpress installation, b) none of my online friends use it, and c) I haven't found that many blogs on Posterous to read. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see whether Posterous gains many converts from their efforts.
Also, on the dw_news comm, they're asking for suggestions in marketing DW. I think, as I said in the comments, there's a big difference between marketing to current/former LJ users, and people are not LJ users or do not enjoy using the LJ software: the marketing approaches will have to be very different there, and I suspect content rather than features might be the attraction.
In other news, here's some interesting speculation (in the comments) on the future of English-language LJ. (Stressing, of course, that it is simply speculation)
Again, I wish to state clearly that this is pure speculation. Personally, I find the scenario of SUP totally abandoning English-speaking operations to be highly unlikely, especially in the light of their investment in ONTD. (Not only did they hire Brenden, a maintainer of ONTD, but they also introduced special features for ONTD.) Also, while the US side probably brings in less revenue than the Russian side, I doubt they would want to say good-bye to all of it by totally forgetting about maintaining their advertisement deals and stopping selling paid services.
Also, it's not monolithic: even if LJ stopped having a physical office in CA, and got rid of Livejournal, Inc. (which is a US company), that doesn't mean that they still couldn't have US-based employees. Also, even if there weren't US-based employees, it doesn't necessarily meant that all English-language communications would cease, either.
Anyway, what's more mysterious to me is why SUP continues to keep the servers in America. Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to run them from Russia? Or are the logistic and technical costs of moving them so daunting that it wouldn't make sense? Or is it that the Russian audience of LJ prefers that they be kept in America? (I've heard rumors to this effect).
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Yes, that. In particular, I believe that the Russian government is notorious for getting rid of bad press, and having the servers in Russia would make it much easier for them to do so (since then they'd have to follow Russian law, which I don't believe is as strict in terms of protecting blog content as the US is). I have no idea whether these fears are actually valid or not, but I know that this is the main reason--or, it used to be, anyway.
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http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/03/13/russian-blogger-heads-to-court-after-fiery-comment/
After a bit of searching, I'm not really clear on what specific protections having the servers in the US provides, especially as it seems that the Russian government tends to pursue its censorship by targeting the individuals who post, who are still inside Russia and subject to Russian law; there's also speculation that government can use other indirect means to get info taken down, such as DDoS attacks.
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And I think in general, people are more paranoid (probably rightly so) about the Russian government looking into what's being said on the site than the US government doing it. So keeping the content under US law is, hopefully, safer in that regard.
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Pure speculation.
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My thoughts now are still along those lines, but having seen the resistance that some people put up to moving when their communities are still on LJ, I have to admit that it might not be quite as obscure in the end as I thought. But still, it's very obvious that the main point of that post is still true; SUP's main audience is in Russia.
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(After all, it appears that more US people visit Orkut than LJ: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=livejournal.com%2C+orkut.com&geo=US&date=all&sort=0)
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I hope to stumble across this comment five years from now and laugh at myself for even vaguely fearing an LJ withdrawal from the US.
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