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charmianIn the most recent DW news post, DW announced that unfortunately, they will not be able to implement the planned cross site reading list feature.
There is some speculation in the comments about how this happened because LJ has it in for DW, but personally, I feel the real reason is much more mundane and doesn't really have to do with DW in particular or DW's particular usage, but just because the bot DW would be using would be using up more of LJ's resources than is permitted by LJ's rules involving bots. Already LJ has a lot of problems with spam-bots, so perhaps their scrutiny of bots has even increased.
On the plus side, in the same entry DW announces that they have mostly finished the new posting page, and are moving to work on drafts/queued posts and image hosting. The latter will probably be a key feature, as this is a major feature on LJ, and a reason that I've heard people say they're not using DW (because it doesn't offer image hosting).
In general, I think the biggest threats to DW are 1) the decline of English-language LJ, and 2) the possibility that another site might solve the 'problems' that LJ (and by extension DW) solves, or that changes in how people use the internet might do away with these problems.
As for LJ, based on how they are only talking to the Russian-speaking userbase about development, I forecast that they'll ignore the English speaking side and focus on Cyrillic-services features. Depending on what features they choose to, or can't avoid, bringing over to the entire site, they might avoid another PR disaster. The English-speaking userbase will probably continue to decline, or continue to be more and more centered around comms, and personal journalers will migrate either to FB, Twitter, Wordpress, or Tumblr, depending on their personal styles.
There is some speculation in the comments about how this happened because LJ has it in for DW, but personally, I feel the real reason is much more mundane and doesn't really have to do with DW in particular or DW's particular usage, but just because the bot DW would be using would be using up more of LJ's resources than is permitted by LJ's rules involving bots. Already LJ has a lot of problems with spam-bots, so perhaps their scrutiny of bots has even increased.
On the plus side, in the same entry DW announces that they have mostly finished the new posting page, and are moving to work on drafts/queued posts and image hosting. The latter will probably be a key feature, as this is a major feature on LJ, and a reason that I've heard people say they're not using DW (because it doesn't offer image hosting).
In general, I think the biggest threats to DW are 1) the decline of English-language LJ, and 2) the possibility that another site might solve the 'problems' that LJ (and by extension DW) solves, or that changes in how people use the internet might do away with these problems.
As for LJ, based on how they are only talking to the Russian-speaking userbase about development, I forecast that they'll ignore the English speaking side and focus on Cyrillic-services features. Depending on what features they choose to, or can't avoid, bringing over to the entire site, they might avoid another PR disaster. The English-speaking userbase will probably continue to decline, or continue to be more and more centered around comms, and personal journalers will migrate either to FB, Twitter, Wordpress, or Tumblr, depending on their personal styles.
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Date: 2011-01-07 12:19 am (UTC)thanks for these updates; they are always fascinating.
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Date: 2011-01-07 12:22 am (UTC)In any case, I don't think that these people will actually migrate because of the lack of LJ development. I think they will migrate because of the global decline in LJ usage and because their friends are there.
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Date: 2011-01-07 02:55 am (UTC)why is the english language side of lj declining, do you think?
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Date: 2011-01-07 03:19 am (UTC)User-experience/UI: LJ's sign-up process, and user-friendliness still need work. It's not as easy to use as other sites. Also, when it comes to new users, the design looks pretty old-fashioned, compared to something like Tumblr, which has many stylish, innovative designs. All this year, IIRC, LJ hasn't introduced new layouts. There are also annoyances like spam and the page takeover ads.
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Date: 2011-01-07 12:41 am (UTC)If your concern is that DW isn't really known or being adopted by people who don't have some sort of LJ connection or familiarity already, it could or could not be a problem depending on whether the site needs more paying members to stay afloat. If DW will have problems staying afloat on their current business model, where it's new paying members switch from will be less important than the fact that not enough of them are buying in.
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Date: 2011-01-07 12:48 am (UTC)Currently, there is probably not a problem with the percentage of paying users, given that over 15% of the active userbase is paying, which IIRC is far in excess of what they said they would need to cover costs.
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Date: 2011-01-07 04:39 am (UTC)That said, I wonder what kind of audience DW will end up catering to, if english LJ really winds down. I know Denise said stuff about it bring for creative people/people who make stuff, but it's all very well saying that when sites like Tumblr seem to just be *being* such a place very very loudly. The attraction of WP and Tumblr isn't all UI, it's that and the interesting strangers you tend to stumble upon there (well, moreso for Tumblr), and as much as I hate the ongoing "too much fandom" vs "too little fandom" debate re communities here, the concern over what draws people here has a point. All the feature parity in the world will not save this site, if the community here doesn't feel like enough of a draw to steadily attract paid members to replace the ones that inevitably leave or drop off.
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Date: 2011-01-07 04:57 am (UTC)TBH, I think to attract creators, you need to have good multimedia support, ease of use, SEO capabilities/customizability, and social media interoperability. Tumblr has really made a lot of efforts to curate content and reach out to the creative communities there, also.
I don't think that WP is really that attractive as a site, but more as a software. Tumblr, on the other hand, is really good for finding creative blogs, because they've really concentrated on making stuff findable by creating directories, etc.
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Date: 2011-01-07 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 08:57 am (UTC)About openID posting in comms, you might try asking on the news comm about that. I can't recall whether it was in the works or rejected as a proposal...
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Date: 2011-01-07 08:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-05 06:23 am (UTC)This seems kinda prescient in light of the whole games thing.
I also had the idea that maybe we could implement cross-site reading lists through a separate app, the way Thunderbird already can if you set it to do authenticated RSS ... what if iDreamwidth and/or the DW Android app could do that? For instance. And maybe a desktop client.
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Date: 2011-02-05 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-05 06:31 am (UTC)Plus Dreamwidth already has an iPhone app.
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Date: 2011-02-05 06:46 am (UTC)Hmm, I suppose it is worth a suggestion, then.
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Date: 2011-02-05 06:51 am (UTC)I was just thinking that taking a distributed approach to cross-site reading lists might be the best way to do it. A native app would also improve UX, since the friends lists / reading lists aren't all that convenient to start with.
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Date: 2011-02-05 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-05 07:09 am (UTC)