Various

[danceswithwords]

I made the most amazing salad in the world two Thursdays ago, and want to post the recipe here. I already posted it to Omnomnom, which has some fabulous recipes. *tips hat to cofax7 for the recommendation*

Comments

[danceswithwords]

LJ seems to have prospered just the way it is, why would they want to go and change the basic way it functions?

It depends on how you define "prospered." If you mean an increase in user base, then yes, but that has plateaued recently. And LJ has not actually made any money. The original developer, and the company that bought it (6Apart), have been able to make money off those sales. The last purchaser (SUP), though, is depending on current revenue.

Any site that hosts photos, that allows real-time commenting, etc., is spending a lot of money on backend databases and bandwidth. And ad revenues are usually really, really small. (Again, synecdochic has a series of very good posts--which match my observations--about revenue and the actual cost of a LJ-type site. I wish I had links, but I didn't save them, but they should be easy to find on her LJ.) So to me, the success of a site is measured by its revenue, not by its number of users, which could actually be a black hole of monetary suck if they're not somehow paying for the resources they use. That's one of the things that makes me nervous about LJ--all of those permanent accounts are a 4-year paid account and then a black hole of revenue suck.

... Sorry, but this is sort of a hobbyhorse of mine, so I tend to go on and on about it. Website development isn't free, but nobody has figured out how to make any money out of it, and at some point, there's going to be a big crash.

ANYWAY. If you run into import problems, look in the DW FAQ for the support communities. They're eager for detailed bug reports, and have a transparent system for tracking known issues.

[rdphantom]

Yes, I did mean 'prospered' as an increase in user base; bad word choice there, but at least it means people are using the site. I didn't know that it had plateaued recently. And it's funny to me to think that such a popular site wouldn't be making money. I've just read through synecdochic's posts about advertising making money for social network sites (under her web 2.0 tag http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/tag/web+2.0). What a lot of info! It's changed the way I look at sites like LiveJournal, and made me (yet again) extremely grateful to the OTW for being a non-profit. Adding the pressure of dealing with advertising to the potential threat of legal action would be a big burden to the OTW, I think. Synecdochic must be in it for the long run, not to sell it for a quick buck, and of course I like that. I hope she figures out a way to sustain the site long term without compromising her values.

No worries, it’s interesting to me too. Since putting up my own (very small) site I’ve been interested in learning more about how the web functions, so it’s really cool to talk to you about it. Plus, as a member of fandom, I have a vested interest in understanding which company or business model will last the longest and give the best services, and putting my content there.

My journal imported into Dreamwidth perfectly, so I’m happy about that. I even got the opportunity to delete some unused tags, which made me happy. Still have to crosspost, and still have to figure out the Circle.