What the lj boycott's about
I'm officially wading into this thing, and not because I necessarily believe a one-day boycott of partial content will be at all "sending a message" or in any other way effective. I'm making a post about the LJ boycott because I'm getting sick and tired of hearing the third party ass-headers who think they know what's going on because they read about something referred to in another ass-header's journal. F**king A, people. We're on the internet. It's got Google and MS Search, and all sorts of other nifty things for looking up actual sources.
It took me all of fifteen seconds to find this article from CNews, the technical journal for Russian software and IT companies.
One of the most popular subjects discussed by LiveJournal’s subscribers is closing the option to register new basic accounts. That is the first type of accounts at LiveJournal, whose owners do not pay for the services and no advertising is posted in their blogs. An alternative to such blogs are paid accounts (for $25 a year a user is provided with a full range of additional services, no advertising posted in his blog) and improved accounts that were launched two year ago (some additional services are available to subscribers for context advertising posted in their blogs). Now it is impossible to register a basic account, no official announcement being made. Only corresponding amendments have been made to the list of Frequently asked questions.
So without making any announcements or any warnings to people, they simply disabled basic accounts. Everyone now has to pay $25 a year if they want to register a new LiveJournal account. They did this on March 12th of this year, so if you have a basic account DO NOT disable it. The arbitrary decision to remove the ability to not pay in order to provide content to SUP for their product (which is what we're doing) caused some people to send in complaints. The boycott officially "found its legs" after the following comments were made by Anton Nosik, CEO of SUP:
With regards to people contacting advertisers:
Of course not. Where will you find such idiots that will call serious companies? It's one thing to call a newspaper in hope that they will give you 15 minutes of fame on their page. But a proper firm? The first thing you'll get asked is "so who exactly are you trying to reach? What is this about and why the hell should we care?
With regards to the possible boycott threat:
Let’s say, I say to you, Mr. Journalist, “I think you put an extra comma here”. Your natural reaction is “Oh, you’re right” or “Let’s ask the editor”. But if I come to you and say “Take away the comma or I will beat you” Will you really go checking your spelling after that?
In a situation where people are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behavior. This is not just human psychology, which retaliates more the more it is pressed. Problem is that there’s never been a successful company whose success was based on bowing to collective resistant forces. No decision - no matter how correct - should be based on pressure.
So in essence he's giving a big fat Russian middle-finger to the people who are somewhat miffed about not being able to register new basic accounts and not being given any warning this feature would be removed. You also have to remember this comes after SUP arbitrarily banned groups posting on LGBT issues because they didn't agree with the content. This also comes after users were banned for posting what was arbitrarily determined to be obscene materials with no warning or posting about future guidelines. Users just attempted to log on one day and were told their account had been canceled with no reason stated.
In short, this isn't just a bunch of prissy little emo kids and prima donnas whining about losing their forums for exchanging tips for hiding bulemia from their parents or meeting 35 year old men for erotic photo shoots. At its heart this is about customer service and who is really the consumer and who is the provider in the Web 2.0 financial model. If a blogging or media content site gets 1m hits a day, it can make a lot of money offering different advertising packages to companies looking to get their products and services in front of those 1m users. If those users are logging in to view content provided by some one other than the site, shouldn't the content providers get something for their trouble?
It took me all of fifteen seconds to find this article from CNews, the technical journal for Russian software and IT companies.
One of the most popular subjects discussed by LiveJournal’s subscribers is closing the option to register new basic accounts. That is the first type of accounts at LiveJournal, whose owners do not pay for the services and no advertising is posted in their blogs. An alternative to such blogs are paid accounts (for $25 a year a user is provided with a full range of additional services, no advertising posted in his blog) and improved accounts that were launched two year ago (some additional services are available to subscribers for context advertising posted in their blogs). Now it is impossible to register a basic account, no official announcement being made. Only corresponding amendments have been made to the list of Frequently asked questions.
So without making any announcements or any warnings to people, they simply disabled basic accounts. Everyone now has to pay $25 a year if they want to register a new LiveJournal account. They did this on March 12th of this year, so if you have a basic account DO NOT disable it. The arbitrary decision to remove the ability to not pay in order to provide content to SUP for their product (which is what we're doing) caused some people to send in complaints. The boycott officially "found its legs" after the following comments were made by Anton Nosik, CEO of SUP:
With regards to people contacting advertisers:
Of course not. Where will you find such idiots that will call serious companies? It's one thing to call a newspaper in hope that they will give you 15 minutes of fame on their page. But a proper firm? The first thing you'll get asked is "so who exactly are you trying to reach? What is this about and why the hell should we care?
With regards to the possible boycott threat:
Let’s say, I say to you, Mr. Journalist, “I think you put an extra comma here”. Your natural reaction is “Oh, you’re right” or “Let’s ask the editor”. But if I come to you and say “Take away the comma or I will beat you” Will you really go checking your spelling after that?
In a situation where people are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behavior. This is not just human psychology, which retaliates more the more it is pressed. Problem is that there’s never been a successful company whose success was based on bowing to collective resistant forces. No decision - no matter how correct - should be based on pressure.
So in essence he's giving a big fat Russian middle-finger to the people who are somewhat miffed about not being able to register new basic accounts and not being given any warning this feature would be removed. You also have to remember this comes after SUP arbitrarily banned groups posting on LGBT issues because they didn't agree with the content. This also comes after users were banned for posting what was arbitrarily determined to be obscene materials with no warning or posting about future guidelines. Users just attempted to log on one day and were told their account had been canceled with no reason stated.
In short, this isn't just a bunch of prissy little emo kids and prima donnas whining about losing their forums for exchanging tips for hiding bulemia from their parents or meeting 35 year old men for erotic photo shoots. At its heart this is about customer service and who is really the consumer and who is the provider in the Web 2.0 financial model. If a blogging or media content site gets 1m hits a day, it can make a lot of money offering different advertising packages to companies looking to get their products and services in front of those 1m users. If those users are logging in to view content provided by some one other than the site, shouldn't the content providers get something for their trouble?