upload open document format files

[commentr]

Title
upload open document format files

Short, concise description of the idea
Be able to host open document format files

Full description of the idea
Search for opendocumentformat, e.g. libreoffice. The concept of non-proprietary "office" documents is similar to livejournal
An ordered list of benefits

• Greater usage of LJ otherwise, tempted to use

Comments

[siderea]

I think I answered some of your question here. Before addressing more of them, I want to clarify some basic assumptions. You say,

that's a task which other services (like Dropbox, for instance) have already implemented rather nicely; I'm not certain why LJ would need to implement it

You do realize that LJ is a business, right? And that sending people to other sites to do tasks is contrary to LJ's business model? Which doesn't mean that LJ doesn't have to be strategic in what functionalities it decides to support, of course; LJ might well decide the constraints of its resources forces them to demure, and leave its users to take advantage of other free or freeish services. But acknowledging that LJ is forced to pick its battles doesn't for a moment mean that LJ wouldn't prefer to be winning all battles. From a simple keeping the lights on and the servers whirring standpoint, to maximize both paid account and ad revenues, the optimal situation is that no user ever leaves LJ for anything, and that everything they need and want is right here.

That's where I'm starting from. And from that perspective, the entire line of reasoning, "why should LJ do it if somebody else does it fine" makes no sense. The default assumption is that LJ should want to do everything a user might want to do -- but can't, so we compromise.

So the question is not, and never is, "Why should LJ do this functionality that someone else has proved is highly desirable to users?" because the answer to that question is obvious on the face of it. It's "why would doing this be better than spending those resources elsewhere?"

My answer to that question in this case (the OP can speak for themselves if they differ) is:

1) LJ's acl system is the best in the world. (Yes, I think it's better than G+'s) An LJ user can't simply use some other sharing service to share with subsets of their flist, without reconstructing their filters over on that other system -- which it may not support, and which to have true parity would somehow require convincing every other user on that filter to sign up with that other service. I've used wikis which try to solve this problem (emailed invites and so forth) and they stink. The level of hassle to set up and use is entirely deterring of engaging in the behavior of sharing files with friends groups.

2) Two of the crucial demographics to which LJ appeals are (1) makers/artists and (2) journalists/bloggers (more on the ЖЖ side). Both of those demographics have reason to want to circulate media assets in a variety of formats: word processing documents, PDFs, sound files, etc. And both those demographics might want to be able to integrate various media formats into their LJs. Journalists might want to link source documents in their posts without worrying about them falling of the net or finding someplace else to host them. Makers/artists would like to be able to share plans, drafts, etc. with limited audiences (see #1, acls, above).

3) In case you hadn't noticed: Tumblr. Storify. G+. The trend is towards multimedia integration in social networking/social blogging. Right now, AFAIK, nobody is doing social document sharing right (Google Docs which is optimized for social document editing is kind of my example of how not to do this). LJ could be the service that gets this one right, and that would help it compete.

[continued]

[mokie]

I'm not involved, but I'd like to address why I think LJ should not do this: I would rather LJ do a few things well than a lot of things badly.

In the recent and not-so-recent past, there's been a lot of hubbub about LJ trying to do everything, flailing madly trying to appeal to everyone, and in the process screwing up badly at keeping its basic functions functional and appealing.

There are a slew of other companies out there doing cloud storage, and they're doing it really, really well. I doubt LJ could really compete with them, but I think LJ trying to compete with them could introduce a whole new layer of user discontent about where LJ is funneling its time, attention and resources.

(Edited for spelling, because it's 2:30am here...)

[charliemc]

Actually, this is a good point...

I might rethink my original answer...