Comments | sarahbellem: Countdown to destruction...

sarahbellem

Countdown to destruction...

Sep 02, 2010 07:56

I'm kind of checking in and out of the news thread and a handful of people have brought up the question as to whether or not LJ made some kind of contractual deal with FB & Twitter to push users towards these other services. And now LJ is in a tight spot, legally speaking, because their customers are clearly screaming DO NOT WANT and packing up in ( Read more... )

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some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories trystbat September 2 2010, 16:48:12 UTC

Facebook & Twitter don't make deals that require specific types of services or content sharing. Think about it: They don't need to. They are the 8,000lb. gorillas in the room. They are where everyone else wants to be. They can just sit back & let third parties come to them, begging to share their measly content on FB/Twitter's platforms ( ... )

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories sarahbellem September 2 2010, 17:08:09 UTC

Thank you for your insider opinion. Howerver, I've never said it would "solve" anything by moving to Dw, fwiw.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories trystbat September 2 2010, 17:24:19 UTC

I just suspect that DW & every other tiny site will eventually need to add ads, sponsorships, integrations w/the rest of the big o' Internet, etc., or whatever else pisses off ppl that LJ is doing. Bec. such is the way of the business world.

Like most companies, LJ started off as a small project by a guy wanting to create some neat online features. Yahoo!, Facebook, Google, most everybody started off that way. And they, hey, we can make this into a real job! Cool. Except there are tradeoffs for both the ppl inside the company & for the users.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories sarahbellem September 2 2010, 17:52:54 UTC

"or whatever else pisses off ppl that LJ is doing ( ... )

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories florentinescot September 2 2010, 18:11:41 UTC

nods. With a blurb that says (in part) "we certainly don't want OUR real names spread around" .....

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories sarahbellem September 2 2010, 18:18:16 UTC

I know there are roughly one million LJ accounts in existence worldwide, probably 50-75% of that are actually active, so 5-10% of the active users saying "No, I do not want this" is probably not going to be statistically relevant to the company, if all they're going off of is that one poll and the post in News.

That's going to be a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who have been with LJ for the better part of a decade and have permanent accounts, and really, permanent relationships that have been forged through LJ. However, permanent account users generate no revenue for the company, so we're already marginalized. We're as bad as free-users, except we get more perks because we paid up front for them pre-Six Apart. There's been 3 changes of ownership with the company in that time, and so what does LJ have to lose if the permanent account holders are pissed off about anything? Nothing. They lose a loyal member, but not a paying customer.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories trystbat September 2 2010, 18:24:29 UTC

Payment is not what generates the most revenue on a site like LJ. Interaction does. That's why comment-porting is a key integration for them.

Interaction keeps users on the site. The small number of permanent users interact with a far greater number of paid & even-better free users (who see ads). Websites thrive on engagement like that.

And that, again, is why they want to port comments over to FB/Twitter, so those vast audiences see LJ content & hopefully come join LJ too.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories sarahbellem September 2 2010, 18:46:19 UTC

Because I'm not in the internet business, I'm not sure I understand: How does interaction create revenue?

I hope that's not coming across as flippant. Apparently I'm having problems with my tone on LJ today. I'm really actually curious to know.

how websites try to make $ trystbat September 2 2010, 19:04:15 UTC

Yeah, interaction is definitely an insider-y concept. Interaction or engagement (to be even more jargony!) keeps users involved with your website. They don't just read a page & go away. They stay on the page & do stuff: post content, comment on content, "like" or "buzz up" or "digg" content, tag content, upload photos/videos, etc ( ... )

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories banshea September 2 2010, 19:47:46 UTC

Does anyone here play World of Warcraft? My boyfriend recently made a huge deal of canceling his account because of privacy issues. They recently changed things so that whenever you log in to the game, you must use your full, legal name. This can be seen by your in-game friends, and also by friends of friends. You must also use your full, legal name whenever you want to post to the game forums.

Initially, there was a huge, negative reaction. To try to demonstrate that there was nothing to be upset about, one of the staff members posted to the forums using his full, legal name. In a matter of hours, photos of his house had been uploaded and hundreds of pizzas had been ordered to his address, among other things. I believe the decision was then made to allow staff members to use their first name only, but everyone else still has to use first and last, because apparently only staffers have to worry about psychotic gamer revenge.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories swashbucklr September 2 2010, 20:57:15 UTC

WoW dropped the full name requirement for the forums.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories banshea September 2 2010, 21:51:17 UTC

As I understand it, my boyfriend is still concerned because of the friend-of-a-friend privacy issue in-game, which I think is still present. The forums were never really his primary concern, because he never posts there, but it's certainly the worst example of how this can go horribly, horribly wrong.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories florentinescot September 2 2010, 21:00:53 UTC

nods. Yeah, right!

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories trystbat September 2 2010, 18:17:11 UTC

I'm not defending LJ, you should know that. I'm saying that no business on the Internet is perfect & FakeJournalThatDoesn'tExistYet business may very well have the same problems in 6 months, a year, 3 years down the road bec. pretty much all Internet businesses are subject to the same pressures.

Many, if not most, online businesses have very weak privacy policies & terms of services. Most privacy policies are esp. weak regarding third-party content sharing. When I was working w/our policy team on Y!'s internal third-party guidelines a few years ago, I did a lot of research & found that only a few of the largest companies even discussed the topic. The smaller they are, the less likely they give a crap about protecting user data. And the federal laws are minimal on the whole topic.

Companies get bought, management changes, customer service & corporate communication sucks. If you find a company that has all of these things figured out perfectly & is still making enough money to survive & support millions of users, let everyone know.

Re: some insider industry info to combat conspiracy theories sarahbellem September 2 2010, 18:24:56 UTC

I didn't think you were defending LJ, and I know you better than to think that you're just playing devil's advocate for the sake of being contrary. For what it's worth, I was just stating what my issues were with the situation right now and why it's making me consider uprooting and trust me, this is not something I'm considering lightly, either... I've thought about migrating to DW since getting an account there, but I've never actually done it because I have deep emotional ties to the people here on LJ, and if that's where the people I want to talk to are, then that's where I'll be. But I'm having real problems with this latest development and I want to be honest about it. My line is drawn at privacy, apparently. All the other stuff that came before, like the management changes, ads, deletion of "questionable content" communities, didn't hit home for me. It's not that they didn't send up little red flags, but I know that management changes, I know that companies need to generate revenue somehow, and that times are changing and ( ... )

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