LJ adds games, community owner status

[charmian]

http://news.livejournal.com/134313.html

So, LJ has added some games, which actually seem to be minimally disruptive, and so far, rather of little interest, judging from the number of people who are playing. Most news commenters seem to be decrying the games, but I think this is an overreaction, given that they probably will not impact people who aren't playing. I wonder if LJ directly got any money for this deal, or they're going to take a cut of revenue?

There is the endless discussion over whether LJ is emulating FB, but I suppose the alternative is emulating Wordpress.com, which probably wouldn't work because a lot of their business is enterprise sites paying enterprise fees. (They could emulate Tumblr or Posterous as well, but currently those two sites are running off their funding, and anyway, both of those sites also have blogs owned by businesses or people using them for professional purposes) Ning perhaps is like the communities feature, but Ning is currently on an all-pay model. (Which seems to be working for them, to some extent) BTW, Sabina unearthed an interesting graph as well: Tumblr.com vs. LJ.com vs. farmville.com. To a great extent I think Tumblr is the new LJ, stripped of the privacy aspects (privacy has gone to locked Twitter and FB.com))

In probably more significant news, LJ now has added an "owner" status to communities, meaning that now there will be an end to the problem of maintainer usurpation. This, IMHO, is a pretty good feature, and perhaps one which Dreamwidth should code also, if it's not part of the free code.

Comments

[luscious_purple]

Interesting ... I didn't realize how big Tumblr.com is growing. I guess I'd better check it out. Is that something I should sign up for under the username "luscious_purple," or my SCA name, or my real name?

[charmian]

There is no real name requirement with tumblr, so you can sign up with whatever username you wish to sign up with, providing it's not already being used by anyone else.

[foxfirefey]

I'd think revenue cuts on in game purchases would be the best model for the partnership to pursue--that way, LiveJournal is motivated to make the games as successful as possible, and the game people will be more patient in building up a userbase rather than needing to get enough revenue to cover the licensing fees.

Although, honestly, I'm not sure how long the partnership will last if they can't get more than a few thousand users. I wonder if it's split up between the Anglophone and Cyrillic alphabets, though? After all, i-Jet is a Russian company, so maybe the main focus is to get Cyrillic users on the games, and any Anglophone users that end up playing them will just be gravy on top, but not the main motivation.

[charmian]

I wonder what LJ can do to make the games successful, though. From what I hear these games tend to diminish in interest once people get tired of playing them, so the companies need to create more games.

No idea what's going on with that. I hadn't realized they were a Russian company. I wonder if the numbers shown reflect only English language users, or global stats.

[feathertail]

They could emulate Tumblr or Posterous as well, but currently those two sites are running off their funding

Tumblr and Posterous are the big blogging sites I keep wondering why DW isn't more like (mainly in terms of simplicity). But that is a really good point. >.> I'll take a sustainable site over that any day.

[charmian]

Well, to be simple, you need to take things out, or not have them from the first place. This is considered a good strategy, but when you are starting from the LJ code in the first place, it would make LJ users less interested in using it. To be simple in this way is difficult. Tumblr/Posterous are each going strong in directions that are different from each other, and from Wordpress, as I see it. Tumblr has the reblog feature, and Posterous now is concentrating on email and groups.

I guess I wasn't really talking about Tumblr/Posterous in terms of features/simplicity, but in terms of business models. I think Tumblr/Posterous are thinking about revenue, judging from their actions, though. Anyway, it's hard to compete against a rival that has more capital, though? Since development costs money, and especially in terms of network effects.

[feathertail]

Good points. I do think DW needs to become more simple and have more streamlined UX ... I'm wondering if native clients aren't the best way to do that, though.

[charmian]

I think they did try to do that, but then, DW's userbase is used to LJ, aren't they? And also has lots of LJ power users.

Hmm, maybe you should try making suggestions about exactly what improvements you want to see in the UX? What exactly needs to become more simple?

The problem is that clients are another step, and less convenient than web interfaces. Also, does DW have that many android and iOS developers? Smartphone users are a minority, so I don't think this is a real solution.

[feathertail]

Hmm, maybe you should try making suggestions about exactly what improvements you want to see in the UX? What exactly needs to become more simple?

I'm honestly not sure. I'd have to spend some time thinking about it and/or creating mockups. I'm not sure it'd be worth the effort, since they don't seem to be making much effort in that direction right now and since I'm not good at graphic design. I guess I was thinking of a native client since that's something I'd like to do (and have).

[charmian]

Huh, so you would look for someone else to do the graphic design in the client you're considering making? Or would that not be needed for the client? I don't really understand how a client which deals with these flaws can be created without an understanding of what these flaws are?

[feathertail]

I think it'd be easier to start over from scratch with designing an interface for Dreamwidth's features -- or some limited set of them -- than to redesign the existing web interface in a way that both covered all the existing features and pleased the user base. At least, I think it'd be easier for me.

[sophie]

I find this discussion amusing, because what a lot of people don't know is that waaaaay back when LJ wasn't even called "LiveJournal", it didn't originally *have* a Web interface for updating - it was view-only. Brad used a self-made client to update his journal online. The Web interface came later, after other people had started using his client too.

[azurelunatic]

The owner thing makes me so very happy.