Too many freeloaders?

[charmian]

Jennyo makes a post here about 'freetards' and DW. Her argument is, what is DW going to do if they end up with an ONTD, which she sees as a big financial liability.

http://jennyo.livejournal.com/1048813.html

She says: 'What's so valuable about Dreamwidth that I should pay them to host content that isn't very fannish and isn't gonna get me kicked off by SUP? If I'm creating content I want to monetize/use on a resume, I can't use DW. If I want to read content at work, I can't use DW.'

Why is it that you can't create content that you want to monetize or put on a resume on DW? Why can't you read DW at work? Are you allowed to read Jezebel at work? (I have no idea?) I think though, there IS that aura. LJ is not considered a respectable forum in many industries, although it does seem to be so to some extent in the publishing industry. Blogspot and wordpress.com are. I don't know why this is, but I think it IS a problem (and one that I think could be fixed to some extent by allowing persistent domain name aliasing). (I have no idea what the DW attitude towards professional uses of the site is)

So far, because the policies haven't been published, I'm not sure what Dreamwidth's attitude is towards people who can blog 'professionally.' A lot of the technical needs of media-slash-fanfic-fandom are driven by the way that it is a) often NSFW or b) illegal to sell/of dubious legality. However, in places like anime blogging, a lot of people do put ads on their sites, and there is no legal problem with it because it's not fanfic, but reviews. Has the inability to put your own ads on your own LJ been one of the things contributing to LJ's image as an 'unprofessional' site? Or is it simply because you cannot run a business off of it? (However that is defined)

Now, I guess I'm going to out myself as someone who has a different opinion from media fandom. I don't really care if a site puts ads on my blog, as long as they are up front w/ me doing so and don't put up malware. I don't care if other people want to put ads on their blogs. I know Denise has explained why advertising doesn't work on social networks. But, does it work on forums and blogs? I have no idea.

There is indeed the problem of some users using vastly more resources than others, and what the service does if that happens. In those cases... is there an escape clause saying 'you've moved beyond the limits of shared hosting, you're going to have to either reduce your usage or upgrade'? Or is that all built in?

Comments

[morineko]

On "can you read it at work?"
I can read Gawker Media sites at work. I can read and comment on wordpress.com sites, as well as journalfen.net and dreamwidth.org. I can also intermittently tweet. (I believe the company I work for uses WP and Twitter for commercial purposes, as well as needing someone to do PR work on Gawker blogs.)
I can read, but not comment, at InsaneJournal and Blogspot.
I cannot read LiveJournal, MySpace, or Facebook--as well as a number of large SF-related blogs that are categorized as "social networking or personal sites." I can read about 99% of sports and politics blogs that I've tried to access. note: LJ IS NOT BLOCKED BECAUSE OF FANNISH PR0N. ;)

Ah, adverts work on some blogs, but not others; ask the bloggers. It's really a YMMV situation, because so much of it has to do with pageviews and clickthroughs.

[charmian]

Hmm, I see. I'm not sure how these things work on how the filters work. If something does begin to be used for commercial purposes, it would seem... perhaps it goes through? Yet it would be hard to say that Gawker ain't full of frivolity. Anyway maybe DW should create a 'help people surf at work' option, LOL.

Yeah, I don't really know much about that. I think the problem is that LJ (and forks) exist confusingly on the boundary between social networking and blogging.

[morineko]

It's full of frivolity, but there's also the fact that commenters, iirc, need to be approved first (their commenting policy has always confused me) so there really isn't that networking factor there--it's essentially read-only.

It depends on how an employer has configured their filter. I think LJ may be blocked for reading because it's one of those sticky sites like facebook where once you're in, you'll never leave. this is not so true for the people who refresh kstp.com or the National Weather Service every two hours. ;)

[charmian]

I've never read the comments at the Gawker sites, so I don't know. I wonder what Jennyo meant anyhow? Maybe there is a secret forum that only members can see? Or it's also a soc. networking site?

[torachan]

I think with the invite system it will be harder for there to be a comm like ONTD. Of course it's not just the users commenting who cause the huge server load for ONTD, but also the many people who are just there browsing (and thus don't need an account), but I think it needs the commenting accounts to get going in the first place, and that won't be as easy without free account creation available.

JF has obviously had similar troubles due to FW over the years, but again, I think FW was already wellknown by the time they put more restrictions on account creation.

Also, I agree with you about ads. I really don't have a problem with them assuming I can block them. Most of the time I'm not even aware of ads thanks to AdBlock.

[morineko]

But you don't need to have accounts to post on something like ONTD, necessarily. Look at (or don't, really) lolmeme.

[torachan]

Right, but unless it's specifically an all-anon comm like lolmeme, most comms are primarily made up of non-anon members, especially in the early days. FW has a lot of anons now, but that explosion of anons only came much later after it was already well-known.

[charmian]

It's hard to say though, how that is affected by the availability of accounts. lolmeme is hosted on JF, where you can't get a new account easily, so even if they wanted to use accounts, they probably couldn't very easily.

In the beginning, also, JF was relatively free for account creation, it was only after the server load started getting heavier IIRC that they started to restrict.

I wonder what ONTD was like in the code era? Did it even exist back then?

[torachan]

I don't think ONTD existed then, and even if it did, it wasn't the site it is now. Hell, it wasn't as big as it is now even just a couple years ago. It's only in the last year or so that it's seriously started giving LJ trouble. At some point it crossed over from just being a vaguely fannish thing to being one of the big celeb gossip sites.

[charmian]

That is interesting... I wonder how they deal with this kind of thing on blogspot?

[charmian]

Yeah, and also with ONTD, there are a lot of people posting, right? But it seems that DW is gonna be pretty liberal with the invite policy, also, and they're talking about bulk invites. I think there's a huge lurker population at ONTD besides the 90K plus formal members, and that def. is a factor.

Yeah, although these days FW seems smaller. Haha, will people be allowed to set up f_w style comms at DW, I wonder? (Still is mysterious why f_w was barred, when stupid_free and others are allowed to run free)

[torachan]

There is already lolmeme here, so I assume anything goes. :p Also while I haven't heard anything about it, it would seem to go against the way DW has been portraying themselves to ban comms like that, idk. I would be very surprised.

The thing about invites is even if there are a lot, you still have to know people to get one.

[charmian]

Oh yeah. There just have been no policies yet, so I'm not sure what the constraints on such comms will be. If lol_meme does start up shop in earnest though, I wonder what will happen, socially speaking. Ha, maybe we can look forward to a flood of meta on the subject, as the core group of metafandom et al seems to be in residence, if anyone is.

Yeah, that is true... I hope they continue giving out random invites, or create some other system by which real people who are not spambots and want to join can get invites.

[troisroyaumes]

Mm, I agree that LJ sits at an awkward intersection between social networking and blogging. I think DW might actually do a better job of integrating the two (especially if it implements more CMS features), and if they really want to market themselves to non-fandom users, that might be the part to emphasize. I know plenty of people who would like to start a blog to just keep up with friends, but find, say, Blogger insufficiently interactive and Wordpress intimidating. Of course, LJ has the closed-wall feel, not to mention the emo!teen reputation.

[charmian]

Yep, I think think the thing is... if you can't use your real name and want to be on the down-low, something like LJ might work. But if you are using your real name, everyone is on facebook or myspace already, so it makes more sense to use those.

Though personally I don't find WP.com intimidating? It's a pain in the butt to deal with WP when you self install it, but WP.com is fairly pain free. Probably even more so when they get Buddypress really running.

[torachan]

But Facebook is really not very good for actual blogging.

[charmian]

Yeah, that is true. Although you can link your real blog there fairly easily.

[troisroyaumes]

There are people who find Facebook too exposing (also, Facebook isn't cut out for journaling). Not sure about Myspace since my offline friends don't use it.

I don't find WP.com intimidating either but I find that friends tend to use it for very focused blogs (like a travel blog or a topic-centered blog) rather than general blogs (which they tend to keep on Blogger).

[charmian]

Yeah, it isn't. Not really sure about Myspace; I've never used it.

Why is that?

[troisroyaumes]

You know, I'm not really sure. And I haven't really gone around WP.com enough to know if that's a trend or not. I do know that WP and WP.com by association carries a "I'm serious about blogging" association for a lot of people though.

[charmian]

Well, WP is the foremost blogging software, and the site is huuuuge and it's rather suitable for enterprise users, with lots of features dedicated to them. I suspect things get up a serious rep when they start being used for commercial purposes, perhaps.

[denise]

We do plan on adding a lot more CMS features -- LJ's awkward intersection is more than just social networking + blogging, it's one part CMS, one part social network, one part blogging service, one part social media service, and it doesn't do any of them particularly wonderfully but it does all of them serviceably well.

Our first year of development priority is getting much, much, much better CMS and blogging tools into the code, like scheduled/draft posts, better domain forwarding, better indexing/archiving tools, etc.

[troisroyaumes]

Yes, I'm definitely looking forward to those features, and I'm hoping that some of them may convince non-fandom friends to join the service. ^^