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More LiveJournal bullshit
Mar. 16th, 2008 11:54 pmWell, I'm sure I'm not the only one to have doubts about the latest l/j malarkey, which is explained not-at-all in the latest ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_news . Basic accounts have been disabled, with no warning. [EDIT: I should emphasise that it's new basic accounts that have been disabled.] This really shits me. The stupid censorship regime already shitted me, as did all the strikethrough crapola, but removing basic accounts - notice or not - really seems to get to the core of what L/J was about.
I joined here as an alternative to ongoing personal discussions on mailing lists, and the combination of a nice simple blogging platform (unlike MySpace et al, the emphasis here is still very much on the written word, which is a strength) with strong community functionality (unlike Blogger, for example) made it a great substitute for those longwinded personal threads that dragged a mailing list off topic. It's a great replacement for Usenet, IMO. I like being able to post my ranty rants, which people can track and respond to as they see fit. I think the communities, where we can hang out with like-minded people or consume everyone's creative endeavours, are most definitely the killer app on this site.
If there had been nothing but an "ad-supported" option to join L/J, I probably wouldn't have joined. I wouldn't have become a Paid member, nor subsequently a Permanent member. I'm far from being the only person to use the try-before-buy option. I would also deplore any attempt to make a Basic account time-limited (although it's too late to worry about that now). Leaving aside the obvious effect that I am now a lot less willing to say "come here and try it out", what about all those temporary accounts that people create totroll ask difficult questions, post on subject that their public persona doesn't, or play RPGs? I know RPGs are a big driver for people on this site.
Next we have the pettiness of L/J apparently censoring the Top Interests page - no more sex, hardcore, porn, yaoi or bondage (grar!). No more bisexuality, depression, or fucking faeries either. I'm not normally of the black helicopter brigade, but is the next step to start censoring our own interests? Who knows, given the amount of discussion about this stuff.
Getting back to the ad-driven revenue model, I seriously believe it's the wrong path to travel down. Revenue from advertising per Internet ad has been dropping appreciably in the last few years, which is the reason why there are more of them everywhere, and they are more intrusive (also the fact that traditional advertising vectors like newspapers are in serious decline, so Internet advertising has grown by a third in Australia in a year). You already have 15%+ of the Internet using browsers like Firefox and Opera, which have ad-blockers available in them (although Opera's sucks). IE7Pro has just entered the scene with a very effective ad-blocker, so let's see how long TPTB can rely on that 85% of people who haven't bothered moving to something more useful.
I haven't seen any serious examination by L/J directors for alternative revenue-raising missions, such as selling things like icon-bundles (an extra 50 for $10 a year?), voice-posting (10 posts for $10), snazzy polling mechanisms and the like. The all-or-nothing model of Basic and Paid/Permanent probably wasn't that sustainable, but there is a heck of a lot of opportunity for incremental charges, or a mix-and-match model for subscriptions (I doubt I'd use voice posts, for example - someone who likes them might want to pay $10 a year more for them). I also think they could charge a bit more for the "everything" Paid accounts. Then there are such measures as clearing out old unused and inactive accounts (inactive accounts could be retained if there are 5 votes from current users, or the original creator has a current account and doesn't wish for the old one to be deleted) - this would save some degree of server space and bandwidth, and increase the interval at which new storage/bandwidth needs to be purchased.
So, with these two things - no more Basic, and the stupid interests-censoring - the sheen is definitely starting to wear off. What alternatives to L/J are people considering? My must haves are a strong user community, active development of features on the site, and the mix of text-heavy blog posting and community facilities. There's Greatest/InsaneJournal, and things like Wordpress. What are the options once the last of the rats decide to make their move?
dw_news . Basic accounts have been disabled, with no warning. [EDIT: I should emphasise that it's new basic accounts that have been disabled.] This really shits me. The stupid censorship regime already shitted me, as did all the I joined here as an alternative to ongoing personal discussions on mailing lists, and the combination of a nice simple blogging platform (unlike MySpace et al, the emphasis here is still very much on the written word, which is a strength) with strong community functionality (unlike Blogger, for example) made it a great substitute for those longwinded personal threads that dragged a mailing list off topic. It's a great replacement for Usenet, IMO. I like being able to post my ranty rants, which people can track and respond to as they see fit. I think the communities, where we can hang out with like-minded people or consume everyone's creative endeavours, are most definitely the killer app on this site.
If there had been nothing but an "ad-supported" option to join L/J, I probably wouldn't have joined. I wouldn't have become a Paid member, nor subsequently a Permanent member. I'm far from being the only person to use the try-before-buy option. I would also deplore any attempt to make a Basic account time-limited (although it's too late to worry about that now). Leaving aside the obvious effect that I am now a lot less willing to say "come here and try it out", what about all those temporary accounts that people create to
Next we have the pettiness of L/J apparently censoring the Top Interests page - no more sex, hardcore, porn, yaoi or bondage (grar!). No more bisexuality, depression, or fucking faeries either. I'm not normally of the black helicopter brigade, but is the next step to start censoring our own interests? Who knows, given the amount of discussion about this stuff.
Getting back to the ad-driven revenue model, I seriously believe it's the wrong path to travel down. Revenue from advertising per Internet ad has been dropping appreciably in the last few years, which is the reason why there are more of them everywhere, and they are more intrusive (also the fact that traditional advertising vectors like newspapers are in serious decline, so Internet advertising has grown by a third in Australia in a year). You already have 15%+ of the Internet using browsers like Firefox and Opera, which have ad-blockers available in them (although Opera's sucks). IE7Pro has just entered the scene with a very effective ad-blocker, so let's see how long TPTB can rely on that 85% of people who haven't bothered moving to something more useful.
I haven't seen any serious examination by L/J directors for alternative revenue-raising missions, such as selling things like icon-bundles (an extra 50 for $10 a year?), voice-posting (10 posts for $10), snazzy polling mechanisms and the like. The all-or-nothing model of Basic and Paid/Permanent probably wasn't that sustainable, but there is a heck of a lot of opportunity for incremental charges, or a mix-and-match model for subscriptions (I doubt I'd use voice posts, for example - someone who likes them might want to pay $10 a year more for them). I also think they could charge a bit more for the "everything" Paid accounts. Then there are such measures as clearing out old unused and inactive accounts (inactive accounts could be retained if there are 5 votes from current users, or the original creator has a current account and doesn't wish for the old one to be deleted) - this would save some degree of server space and bandwidth, and increase the interval at which new storage/bandwidth needs to be purchased.
So, with these two things - no more Basic, and the stupid interests-censoring - the sheen is definitely starting to wear off. What alternatives to L/J are people considering? My must haves are a strong user community, active development of features on the site, and the mix of text-heavy blog posting and community facilities. There's Greatest/InsaneJournal, and things like Wordpress. What are the options once the last of the rats decide to make their move?
