New Friends Page again

[cindergal]

lj_releases has now posted publicly about the new friends page redesign which is now in beta testing. It appears it will be mandatory from the wording used ("The friends page has been redesigned as a system page for all users

Comments

[goldenusagi]

I'm surprised there are only 500 comments so far. When they announced the 'no subject line' thing, that release post got 10,000 comments.

[cindergal]

Wow, 10,000! I imagine a lot of communities mobilize their members for that one? I just hope there is at least some sort of work around for this friends page thing.

[goldenusagi]

What annoys me is that, say I decide I can put up with the new flist. But all my friends have moved to DW. So they're not reading LJ anymore. Not reading is different than not posting from. Which means that now I *have* to go to DW if I want to talk to people, or want them to talk to me.

I know crossposting is easy, but something in me just dislikes having to deal with two sites, keep up with things on two sites, etc.

[cindergal]

Exactly. I've resisted DW for so long for exactly that reason. I do not want to deal with 2 sites. Sigh.

[hobbituk]

I've commented on how much I hate it - I only ever view my flist in my own style because I dislike the switching about. Why are they doing this??????

[cindergal]

I have no idea why, other than they want to be just like tumblr and FB? Makes no sense to me.

[mech_bull]

I have no real opinion on the format to be honest, except to say I loathe infinite scrolling. What I find most obnoxious about things like this (and the same goes for other social network sites) is they never listen to users anyway. Maybe very occasionally or under specific circumstances, but most times they do what they want. Even if they make most of their money off of ads and not paid users, they still have to have people using the site. When did "the customer doesn't get a say" become an acceptable business model?

[cindergal]

I know, it's infuriating. As is, you can't even change the font with the new page! And I just heard that they are doing away with paid accounts soon, so we won't even be able to say, hey, we're paying customers! :-p

[goldenusagi]

Where was this?

[cindergal]

I saw it in the comments to the release 98 post, but I don't have a link or anything. More than one person mentioned it, and I tend to believe it because it's one more way to be like tumblr/FB.

[zanthinegirl]

I saw your earlier post (not sure if I commented?) so I was at least a little bit prepared when I opened my friend's page and was confronted with "You are using the old Friend's Page. Switch to new Friend's Page now?"

Sigh.

[cindergal]

Yeah, that would be a "no." LOL! I haven't gotten that message yet, though.

[slaymesoftly]

I'll comment, because I think it's ugly and because I find Tumblr very confusing. But I doubt it will do much good. I saw somewhere that they are really concentrating on Russia now, and cutting back on their presence in the US. Don't remember where I saw that, but it was fairly recent.

[cindergal]

Yes they're concentrating their operations in Russia, but LJ has always had users all over the world, and users from all over are commenting negatively on this, so I don't think it's about them being Russian as much as them being idiots. :-)

But I agree that it will likely do little good.

[slaymesoftly]

I didn't mean that they were making the changes because they are Russians, just that if that's where they think the majority of their important customers are, that they won't pay much attention to complaints from the rest of us. But at least if/when everyone leaves in droves for DW, they'll know why. ;)

[cindergal]

Yes, by Russians I meant that you meant that they only cared about Russian customers. LOL! Got that? But my point was that I don't think they care about any customers, frankly. I don't know what the logic is.

DW was created by fans for fandom. I really like it there, but I've resisted because...everyone is here at LJ. And change is difficult. And I don't want to be in two places. But they may have forced my hand. We'll see how this FL things plays out.