update re: basic accounts and other issues of the week
Things have clearly been crazy while I was gone. I'm in the middle of catching up, but I wanted to respond to some of the issues at play, to the best that I can.
First, thank you to everyone who is publicly critiquing what's going on, protesting, and otherwise making their voice known. To me, this is a sign of passion, and a perfect guiding post for helping LJ understand its constituents. Companies (and their advisors) actually like hearing people's unfiltered opinions, even if they don't always like what's being said. I'm not going to be able to respond to everyone's comments personally because of time, but I am reading them all.
LJ is aware that it made many mistakes concerning the change in Basic Accounts. Here's their comment. In short, things are being discussed about what to do. Personally, I'm a big fan of the suggestion made by many users to make Basic Accounts available by invite-only. I think that this would balance many of the issues at play while still giving LJ room to innovate wrt financial models. Given all of the feedback from y'all, this is what I'm going to push for, but I can't promise anything.
One thing to keep in mind wrt economics. It is very rare that old posts, old communities, and old accounts die. Over time, there is a lot more content and the public items get more traffic as they get picked up by search engines. Even if LJ took on no new users, the costs of maintaining the site would go up every year. This creates a tricky financial situation because it requires innovative new ways to recoup those costs and come out ahead each year without cruelly punishing users. Most people pay for accounts because they value LJ, not because they want extra features. The percentage of folks who want and will pay for extra features is actually quite small (although typically vocal). This is why it's tricky to figure out a good economic system that will benefit everyone. Back in the day, ?Tripod? did a study of how much people would pay to not have ads on their homepages - they found that people were willing to pay something like 20% of what it actually cost to maintain those pages. Economically, that doesn't add up and often results in the death of sites. Most of us don't want LJ to die and so we need to find a financial solution that will allow LJ to come out ahead, grow, and put savings aside for the future. The goal isn't to become MySpace, but it is to be profitable. We just need to find a solution that will benefit everyone. And as anyone who lived through the last bubble and is cringing over the current one knows, this is not easy. Even ads aren't the panacea that folks might wish for, but they are a far better bet than most things. That's why we have to innovate in this space.
The same challenge faces us wrt features. How can LJ grow to be more valuable to more users without alienating those who are passionate about LJ? In order to figure this out, it's important to pay attn to how LJ is being used in different countries. Those of you who don't speak Russian may not realize that Russian LJ use looks a lot more like the public blogosphere in the States than it does like the LJ culture in the States. It's where political debate takes place and even the government has LJs to talk back to their constituents. This is a separate LJ culture and there's often very little interaction between some of the different cultures here. Thus, as LJ grows, it can't just take into consideration the vocal U.S. LJ users, but also the LJ users elsewhere. For example, many of the Russian LJ users want to be hyper visible and attract millions of readers, while this is not the norm in the States. Again, balance is key and it's tricky. It's not just one community out there, but many... and they are often fragmented and unaware of each other.
Many have asked why here important announcements are being made at lj_2008 instead of news. The reason is actually practical, not deceptive. Folks feel as though blasting too much too often on news would overwhelm many users. Yet, there is also understanding that trying to track what's going on across multiple LJs is confusing as all hell. We're going to plot on solving that one.
Last week, there was a bug in the system related to interests resulting in the removal of some interests. Although the interests that disappeared were random and all over the place, many thought this was intentional censorship by LJ. This was not and the problem was fixed as soon as it was discovered. Please let me know if anyone is still experiencing this problem.
Anyhow, more shortly... but hopefully this helps clarify a few things.
First, thank you to everyone who is publicly critiquing what's going on, protesting, and otherwise making their voice known. To me, this is a sign of passion, and a perfect guiding post for helping LJ understand its constituents. Companies (and their advisors) actually like hearing people's unfiltered opinions, even if they don't always like what's being said. I'm not going to be able to respond to everyone's comments personally because of time, but I am reading them all.
LJ is aware that it made many mistakes concerning the change in Basic Accounts. Here's their comment. In short, things are being discussed about what to do. Personally, I'm a big fan of the suggestion made by many users to make Basic Accounts available by invite-only. I think that this would balance many of the issues at play while still giving LJ room to innovate wrt financial models. Given all of the feedback from y'all, this is what I'm going to push for, but I can't promise anything.
One thing to keep in mind wrt economics. It is very rare that old posts, old communities, and old accounts die. Over time, there is a lot more content and the public items get more traffic as they get picked up by search engines. Even if LJ took on no new users, the costs of maintaining the site would go up every year. This creates a tricky financial situation because it requires innovative new ways to recoup those costs and come out ahead each year without cruelly punishing users. Most people pay for accounts because they value LJ, not because they want extra features. The percentage of folks who want and will pay for extra features is actually quite small (although typically vocal). This is why it's tricky to figure out a good economic system that will benefit everyone. Back in the day, ?Tripod? did a study of how much people would pay to not have ads on their homepages - they found that people were willing to pay something like 20% of what it actually cost to maintain those pages. Economically, that doesn't add up and often results in the death of sites. Most of us don't want LJ to die and so we need to find a financial solution that will allow LJ to come out ahead, grow, and put savings aside for the future. The goal isn't to become MySpace, but it is to be profitable. We just need to find a solution that will benefit everyone. And as anyone who lived through the last bubble and is cringing over the current one knows, this is not easy. Even ads aren't the panacea that folks might wish for, but they are a far better bet than most things. That's why we have to innovate in this space.
The same challenge faces us wrt features. How can LJ grow to be more valuable to more users without alienating those who are passionate about LJ? In order to figure this out, it's important to pay attn to how LJ is being used in different countries. Those of you who don't speak Russian may not realize that Russian LJ use looks a lot more like the public blogosphere in the States than it does like the LJ culture in the States. It's where political debate takes place and even the government has LJs to talk back to their constituents. This is a separate LJ culture and there's often very little interaction between some of the different cultures here. Thus, as LJ grows, it can't just take into consideration the vocal U.S. LJ users, but also the LJ users elsewhere. For example, many of the Russian LJ users want to be hyper visible and attract millions of readers, while this is not the norm in the States. Again, balance is key and it's tricky. It's not just one community out there, but many... and they are often fragmented and unaware of each other.
Many have asked why here important announcements are being made at lj_2008 instead of news. The reason is actually practical, not deceptive. Folks feel as though blasting too much too often on news would overwhelm many users. Yet, there is also understanding that trying to track what's going on across multiple LJs is confusing as all hell. We're going to plot on solving that one.
Last week, there was a bug in the system related to interests resulting in the removal of some interests. Although the interests that disappeared were random and all over the place, many thought this was intentional censorship by LJ. This was not and the problem was fixed as soon as it was discovered. Please let me know if anyone is still experiencing this problem.
Anyhow, more shortly... but hopefully this helps clarify a few things.