Interesting reading

[_lethe_]

I was linked to an English translation of a very interesting interview LJ's Russian overlord igrick gave to the Russian Forbes.

It is full of contradictory statements. His business decisions don't make any sense to me, unless, as one commenter in the news group said, he's really trying to sink LJ and write it off as a loss.

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Comments

[mallorys_camera]

This is incrediby interesting, particularly the breakdown of how Russian, American, and -- uh -- Singaporeans respectively use LJ. ($50,000 a month? Really?)

Very interesting dilemma. How does one define a transcultural business product that means different things in different cultures?

[_lethe_]

Yes, even if it's in Singaporean dollars that is still a very large amount of money.

It is a dilemma, but I don't think he's handling it well. In America, paid subscriptions bring in as much money as advertising does, yet igrick c.s. seem hell-bent on driving the paying subscribers away. In Russia most income is from advertising, yet they are going to reduce the number of adverts shown starting in Russia. Etc. etc.

Why not accept that there are roughly three LJ cultures and keep catering for them? They have done OK so far. Instead, the new comment pages and the continued poor to non-existent customer service have finally provoked a mass exodus - and interestingly, he mentions Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr as possible competitors, but seems to deny all existence of other journalling services. But now that Dreamwidth allows community imports, he should be afraid. Very, very afraid.

[mallorys_camera]

Thought you might be interested in reading this:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1809674/the-return-of-livejournal

[_lethe_]

Thank you, I came across it yesterday in a comment to the "news" group.

Another interesting read, and another mystifying business decision ("LiveJournal's leadership has made it clear that their future American business strategy lies in generating new traffic rather than catering to the service's current small-but-loyal membership.")

Good luck and good riddance, LJ.