Dreamwidth: this week's fact sheet
I have seen much, much confusion floating around in the past two days or so! I've commented in a few places here and there to clarify, but I don't want to be too intrusive, so I figured I would make a post and people can point their friends here when they have questions. (Our FAQ team, which is made of awesome, is not entirely finished with all of the FAQs we need yet. All of this information will exist on the site itself in some form by the time we launch to open beta.)
To that end, a fact sheet. Please link freely if you see people being confused! i will also take questions from the back of the room (oh god i've been awake for like a full day)
* You (probably) can't create an account yet.
Until April 30th, we're in our "closed beta" phase, where our beta testers are helping us to identify the worst of the bugs in our code. On the evening of April 30, we'll open to public account creation. At that point, you have two options to create an account:
* None of the closed-beta testers have invite codes to give out yet.
During closed beta, the only people who have invites to give out are project leaders -- me, xb95, and some of our volunteer project managers who need to give invites to their teams.
* We're giving random invites to extend our closed beta.
In order to get more eyeballs, a wider set of use cases, and somebody to notice that one thing we all thought would probably just clear itself up and therefore forgot to log a bug for it, we're adding more people to the closed beta on a more-or-less daily basis.
We're using a few methods to determine this. On Monday, for instance, both Mark and I gave invites to the first five people on our friends list who commented; on Tuesday, we gave invites to five random people from the dw-discuss mailing list (literally random; I found a web program that would let me roll arbitrarily-sided dice); on Wednesday, we gave invites to five random people who had logged into Dreamwidth with their OpenID accounts and set and validated their email addresses. Tomorrow we might give invites to people who've made really awesome posts or comments about why they're interested in moving to Dreamwidth, or we might give invites to random members of one of our other mailing lists, or we might post a few invites to our Twitter and see how long it takes them to be used. ;)
We're looking for as much diversity and randomness in the people we pick, because we know that people use their online services in lots of different ways, and we want to make sure we get as many different sets of eyeballs as possible.
* We're going to start giving out invites to our existing closed-beta testers to hand out, but not yet.
Right now we're planning to release a few invites "into the wild" to our existing closed-beta testers and volunteers early next week. I've already promised that anyone who gets a patch committed between now and Monday gets one code per committed patch to give out, for instance.
* When accounts go on sale April 30, they have multiple price options.
We set our prices scientifically, and if you're interested in seeing how we did it, that mailing list message goes into (exhaustive) detail.
The long and the short of it is, though: We'll have two levels of "paid account", paid and premium paid. Paid accounts get all the paid features; premium paid get all the paid features at higher levels.
Our first six months, we will discount our prices, to reflect that we'll still be in 'beta mode'. During that time, accounts will cost:
I clarified some of this in this week's news update (item #2): why we're doing it, what we gain from it, what we lose from it, and why we're only doing it once.
We originally thought they were going to sell very, very slowly. We're, uh, rethinking that assessment. People have asked us if we could sell more of them to match the demand, or leave them on sale for a specific time instead of a specific number, and we decided against it. We set the price because we believe our first year of operating expenses will be around $80k, so we're selling $80k worth of Seed Accounts to make sure we have that money available to us and don't have to fundraise every month to meet our operating expenses.
Selling Seed Accounts at open-beta launch will let us breathe easier and concentrate more on making a kickass service.
* Seed accounts aren't your only option.
If you can't or don't want to purchase a Seed Account, you can still support the site and the project by paying for your account using one of the options above. The Seed Accounts are for people who really want to invest in the project's growth and stability. That's why we called them "Seed" accounts instead of "Permanent" accounts -- we mean 'seed' as in seed funding.
We really, really don't want people to feel like we're trying to pressure them into putting down a lot of money on a service they aren't yet sure they want to use. (I know that many people, myself included, have a weak saving throw against limited-time offers, which is part of why we're hoping that it won't turn into a rush-to-the-finish-line.) Seed Accounts are for people who know that they're going to use the service, and want to help us subsidize our first year of operations.
If you're hesitating at all about whether or not you want to buy a Seed Account, don't. We'd much, much rather earn your trust (and your payments) over time.
We know that many people feel that once a site has their money, the site stops listening to their concerns and their needs, because they can no longer vote with their wallets. We hope we'll never make you feel this way, and if we start to slide in that direction, I personally invite you to come to one of our monthly stitch & bitch sessions and smack me with a skein of yarn. But if you worry about whether we're capable of upholding that commitment, but still want to support the site or have access to the paid user features, buy a regular paid account instead of a Seed Account.
* You can bypass the need for an invite code with one month of paid time, for $3.
We hope you'll choose one of the other paid time options. We didn't change our price ratio for smaller blocks of paid time more than a few cents per direction to make the numbers come out more even, so with the smaller payments, a greater percentage of your payment will be eaten by processing fees. (That's why, for instance, we couldn't discount the one-month payment option for our first six months; it's the only payment option that doesn't get a first-six-month discount.) We thought it was more important that we not penalize people who wanted to pay month-by-month by making them pay more for identical services.
But if you want to pay month-by-month, or if you want to buy a month of paid time to create an account and decide if you like it and want to keep using it, you absolutely can. And then, if you choose not to renew your paid account, you can keep using it as a free account. You can also tell us why you chose not to renew, and if it's something we can fix for you, we'll do our best.
* Once you get an account, you can import all of your content from most LiveJournal-based services.
If you want to use Dreamwidth as a backup for your journal on LiveJournal or InsaneJournal or (most) other LJ-based services, or if you want to bring your history along with you, you can. Dreamwidth will automatically import your entries, comments, tags, userpics -- you name it, we'll probably get it.
At open-beta launch, we'll only support importing from LJ-based services (since that's what we could implement quickly), but we have plans to expand this to other services too, as much as we can: Blogspot, TypePad, Movable Type, Wordpress, etc.
* You'll be able to crosspost your entries to another LJ-based service from within Dreamwidth itself.
It isn't finished yet, but by open beta, you'll be able to go to Dreamwidth's update page and post to both Dreamwidth and another LJ-based service from one place. You'll also be able to set it so that comments are disabled on the other sites you post to, and people are redirected to your Dreamwidth account to comment.
At open-beta launch, we'll only support crossposting to LJ-based services (since that's what we could implement quickly), but we have plans to expand this to other services too: Blogspot, TypePad, Movable Type, Wordpress, etc.
* You'll be able to keep up with your friends on other services.
It won't be perfect at first -- the problem of how to show you protected entries in a non-evil way is a hard one to crack -- but you will be able to read (for instance) public posts on your LJ friends page through your Dreamwidth account.
We aren't finished with this yet, but we will be by open beta.
* Things aren't totally done yet.
As you can tell from the points above, we're still working on many of our features and enhancements, as well as bugfixes. Development is incredibly active, and there are new improvements being checked in every day.
This means that things might be broken, or look different, or just work weird when you go to check Dreamwidth out. Please excuse our dust! Things are changing very rapidly.
We're keeping a list of user-facing Known Issues on our wiki, if you don't want to wade through our bug tracker. It may be a little out of date at any given time, since it has to be manually copied over. Bugzilla has the most recent information.
* We're making a lot of changes.
We aren't just installing the LiveJournal server code and going from there. We've made a bunch of changes, and a lot of them we're really excited about.
You can log in with your OpenID and take a look around at some of the things we've made; rydra_wong has a good post about OpenID on Dreamwidth, and so does damned_colonial.
* We welcome you. Whoever you are.
Dreamwidth is fan-friendly, but not fandom-specific or fandom-exclusive. You don't need to be in fandom to join Dreamwidth, and in fact we hope we'll develop a diverse userbase with any number of interests. Our Diversity Statement covers all sorts of things about the community we hope to build.
If there's anything I've missed, let me know! (Although I'm going to go pass out now. I've been up for a really long time.)
To that end, a fact sheet. Please link freely if you see people being confused! i will also take questions from the back of the room (oh god i've been awake for like a full day)
* You (probably) can't create an account yet.
Until April 30th, we're in our "closed beta" phase, where our beta testers are helping us to identify the worst of the bugs in our code. On the evening of April 30, we'll open to public account creation. At that point, you have two options to create an account:
- Get an invite code from an existing Dreamwidth user.
- Make a payment to us to bypass the need for an invite code.
* None of the closed-beta testers have invite codes to give out yet.
During closed beta, the only people who have invites to give out are project leaders -- me, xb95, and some of our volunteer project managers who need to give invites to their teams.
* We're giving random invites to extend our closed beta.
In order to get more eyeballs, a wider set of use cases, and somebody to notice that one thing we all thought would probably just clear itself up and therefore forgot to log a bug for it, we're adding more people to the closed beta on a more-or-less daily basis.
We're using a few methods to determine this. On Monday, for instance, both Mark and I gave invites to the first five people on our friends list who commented; on Tuesday, we gave invites to five random people from the dw-discuss mailing list (literally random; I found a web program that would let me roll arbitrarily-sided dice); on Wednesday, we gave invites to five random people who had logged into Dreamwidth with their OpenID accounts and set and validated their email addresses. Tomorrow we might give invites to people who've made really awesome posts or comments about why they're interested in moving to Dreamwidth, or we might give invites to random members of one of our other mailing lists, or we might post a few invites to our Twitter and see how long it takes them to be used. ;)
We're looking for as much diversity and randomness in the people we pick, because we know that people use their online services in lots of different ways, and we want to make sure we get as many different sets of eyeballs as possible.
* We're going to start giving out invites to our existing closed-beta testers to hand out, but not yet.
Right now we're planning to release a few invites "into the wild" to our existing closed-beta testers and volunteers early next week. I've already promised that anyone who gets a patch committed between now and Monday gets one code per committed patch to give out, for instance.
* When accounts go on sale April 30, they have multiple price options.
We set our prices scientifically, and if you're interested in seeing how we did it, that mailing list message goes into (exhaustive) detail.
The long and the short of it is, though: We'll have two levels of "paid account", paid and premium paid. Paid accounts get all the paid features; premium paid get all the paid features at higher levels.
Our first six months, we will discount our prices, to reflect that we'll still be in 'beta mode'. During that time, accounts will cost:
- Paid accounts: $25 for 12 months; $13 for 6 months; $5 for 2 months; $3 for 1 month
- Premium paid accounts: $40 for 12 months; $20 for 6 months
- Paid accounts: $35 for 12 months; $17.50 for 6 months; $6 for 2 months; $3 for 1 month
- Premium paid accounts: $50 for 12 months; $25 for 6 months
I clarified some of this in this week's news update (item #2): why we're doing it, what we gain from it, what we lose from it, and why we're only doing it once.
We originally thought they were going to sell very, very slowly. We're, uh, rethinking that assessment. People have asked us if we could sell more of them to match the demand, or leave them on sale for a specific time instead of a specific number, and we decided against it. We set the price because we believe our first year of operating expenses will be around $80k, so we're selling $80k worth of Seed Accounts to make sure we have that money available to us and don't have to fundraise every month to meet our operating expenses.
Selling Seed Accounts at open-beta launch will let us breathe easier and concentrate more on making a kickass service.
* Seed accounts aren't your only option.
If you can't or don't want to purchase a Seed Account, you can still support the site and the project by paying for your account using one of the options above. The Seed Accounts are for people who really want to invest in the project's growth and stability. That's why we called them "Seed" accounts instead of "Permanent" accounts -- we mean 'seed' as in seed funding.
We really, really don't want people to feel like we're trying to pressure them into putting down a lot of money on a service they aren't yet sure they want to use. (I know that many people, myself included, have a weak saving throw against limited-time offers, which is part of why we're hoping that it won't turn into a rush-to-the-finish-line.) Seed Accounts are for people who know that they're going to use the service, and want to help us subsidize our first year of operations.
If you're hesitating at all about whether or not you want to buy a Seed Account, don't. We'd much, much rather earn your trust (and your payments) over time.
We know that many people feel that once a site has their money, the site stops listening to their concerns and their needs, because they can no longer vote with their wallets. We hope we'll never make you feel this way, and if we start to slide in that direction, I personally invite you to come to one of our monthly stitch & bitch sessions and smack me with a skein of yarn. But if you worry about whether we're capable of upholding that commitment, but still want to support the site or have access to the paid user features, buy a regular paid account instead of a Seed Account.
* You can bypass the need for an invite code with one month of paid time, for $3.
We hope you'll choose one of the other paid time options. We didn't change our price ratio for smaller blocks of paid time more than a few cents per direction to make the numbers come out more even, so with the smaller payments, a greater percentage of your payment will be eaten by processing fees. (That's why, for instance, we couldn't discount the one-month payment option for our first six months; it's the only payment option that doesn't get a first-six-month discount.) We thought it was more important that we not penalize people who wanted to pay month-by-month by making them pay more for identical services.
But if you want to pay month-by-month, or if you want to buy a month of paid time to create an account and decide if you like it and want to keep using it, you absolutely can. And then, if you choose not to renew your paid account, you can keep using it as a free account. You can also tell us why you chose not to renew, and if it's something we can fix for you, we'll do our best.
* Once you get an account, you can import all of your content from most LiveJournal-based services.
If you want to use Dreamwidth as a backup for your journal on LiveJournal or InsaneJournal or (most) other LJ-based services, or if you want to bring your history along with you, you can. Dreamwidth will automatically import your entries, comments, tags, userpics -- you name it, we'll probably get it.
At open-beta launch, we'll only support importing from LJ-based services (since that's what we could implement quickly), but we have plans to expand this to other services too, as much as we can: Blogspot, TypePad, Movable Type, Wordpress, etc.
* You'll be able to crosspost your entries to another LJ-based service from within Dreamwidth itself.
It isn't finished yet, but by open beta, you'll be able to go to Dreamwidth's update page and post to both Dreamwidth and another LJ-based service from one place. You'll also be able to set it so that comments are disabled on the other sites you post to, and people are redirected to your Dreamwidth account to comment.
At open-beta launch, we'll only support crossposting to LJ-based services (since that's what we could implement quickly), but we have plans to expand this to other services too: Blogspot, TypePad, Movable Type, Wordpress, etc.
* You'll be able to keep up with your friends on other services.
It won't be perfect at first -- the problem of how to show you protected entries in a non-evil way is a hard one to crack -- but you will be able to read (for instance) public posts on your LJ friends page through your Dreamwidth account.
We aren't finished with this yet, but we will be by open beta.
* Things aren't totally done yet.
As you can tell from the points above, we're still working on many of our features and enhancements, as well as bugfixes. Development is incredibly active, and there are new improvements being checked in every day.
This means that things might be broken, or look different, or just work weird when you go to check Dreamwidth out. Please excuse our dust! Things are changing very rapidly.
We're keeping a list of user-facing Known Issues on our wiki, if you don't want to wade through our bug tracker. It may be a little out of date at any given time, since it has to be manually copied over. Bugzilla has the most recent information.
* We're making a lot of changes.
We aren't just installing the LiveJournal server code and going from there. We've made a bunch of changes, and a lot of them we're really excited about.
You can log in with your OpenID and take a look around at some of the things we've made; rydra_wong has a good post about OpenID on Dreamwidth, and so does damned_colonial.
* We welcome you. Whoever you are.
Dreamwidth is fan-friendly, but not fandom-specific or fandom-exclusive. You don't need to be in fandom to join Dreamwidth, and in fact we hope we'll develop a diverse userbase with any number of interests. Our Diversity Statement covers all sorts of things about the community we hope to build.
If there's anything I've missed, let me know! (Although I'm going to go pass out now. I've been up for a really long time.)