Seriously?!
Under Ex-Googler CEO, LiveJournal Gets A Revamp, Promises New Services, Apps And More In 2014
LiveJournal wants to matter again, and is making a number of changes over the course of 2014 which the company hopes will make it a more relevant social networking destination, starting with a major revamp of its homepage and user interface, rolled out into beta just yesterday. On the horizon, the company is also promising several new services as well as new mobile apps, in an overarching vision that sounds as if it wants to find a new niche for itself as something of a competitor to Medium.
1) Why do people keep wanting to change LJ into a social networking service? Don't we have enough of those already? I have a Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr account. I don't want another site like that. The reason I keep coming back to LJ is the community-based structure, and that's something that Facebook has tried, unsuccessfully, to incorporate into its services. The reason I like LJ's comms better than the even older and more defunct forum structure is that it's easier to navigate.
2) Another new ownership firm that isn't going to give a damn about the actual users of the site. Yay. And this time, there hasn't even been an official announcement in news about the beta. We've gone from bad to worse. Thank goodness I was able to opt out of it. From what I understand, that option wasn't given to everyone.
3) I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the Android and iOS apps. The current apps are ugly, broken, and seriously dated. As long as they allow Basic accounts to actually use the apps, I'm good with this. This is something that has been needed for a while.
4) Saving the best for last: if you really want to matter again, why don't you start with actually listening to your users when we tell you to stop fixing things that aren't broken. Don't take away our customized Friends pages; they are more than just an activity feed to us, and our layouts are more than just a way to personalize our journals. We spend days, sometimes weeks, searching for or writing the codes for them so we can read the site on a page that looks exactly the way we want it. Leave our profiles alone; they are more than just a list of our friends, interests, and communities to us. They are another place for us to declare who we are and the goals of our journals. We boil ourselves and our journals down to a nutshell and put it on our profiles. If we tell you that the changes you've made are giving us migraines, listen to us; the best way to drive people away from the site is to make it inaccessible to users.
ETA: have a repost button, for those who wish to share!
LiveJournal wants to matter again, and is making a number of changes over the course of 2014 which the company hopes will make it a more relevant social networking destination, starting with a major revamp of its homepage and user interface, rolled out into beta just yesterday. On the horizon, the company is also promising several new services as well as new mobile apps, in an overarching vision that sounds as if it wants to find a new niche for itself as something of a competitor to Medium.
1) Why do people keep wanting to change LJ into a social networking service? Don't we have enough of those already? I have a Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr account. I don't want another site like that. The reason I keep coming back to LJ is the community-based structure, and that's something that Facebook has tried, unsuccessfully, to incorporate into its services. The reason I like LJ's comms better than the even older and more defunct forum structure is that it's easier to navigate.
2) Another new ownership firm that isn't going to give a damn about the actual users of the site. Yay. And this time, there hasn't even been an official announcement in news about the beta. We've gone from bad to worse. Thank goodness I was able to opt out of it. From what I understand, that option wasn't given to everyone.
3) I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the Android and iOS apps. The current apps are ugly, broken, and seriously dated. As long as they allow Basic accounts to actually use the apps, I'm good with this. This is something that has been needed for a while.
4) Saving the best for last: if you really want to matter again, why don't you start with actually listening to your users when we tell you to stop fixing things that aren't broken. Don't take away our customized Friends pages; they are more than just an activity feed to us, and our layouts are more than just a way to personalize our journals. We spend days, sometimes weeks, searching for or writing the codes for them so we can read the site on a page that looks exactly the way we want it. Leave our profiles alone; they are more than just a list of our friends, interests, and communities to us. They are another place for us to declare who we are and the goals of our journals. We boil ourselves and our journals down to a nutshell and put it on our profiles. If we tell you that the changes you've made are giving us migraines, listen to us; the best way to drive people away from the site is to make it inaccessible to users.
ETA: have a repost button, for those who wish to share!