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ljspeaks and my personal journal.
I don't think I've ever posted directly here (ljspeaks). I honestly didn't think I would. I'm not a 'community leader', whatever that means in this day and age. If I'm an activist, I'm a bad one because I tend to yell a lot and then do nothing. But after this latest SUP foul-up, a few things have become painfully clear. I thought I'd take a few minutes to share, and see what others think. But first, I want to lay out the basis of my idea, just so everyone can se where I'm coming from.
First off, it's pretty clear that we're not wanted. We're too out-spoken, too independent, too niche, too not-mainstream (for lack of a better word). We're not the kind of users any sane company would want to show off to investors. The on-going cries of "but how will you define the character's age in my sexually-explicit art" is just an example of this. SUP does not want us. They want to make a fast buck (the "Russian businessman" approach I saw someone else mention), which means drawing in hordes of users who directly and immediately contribute financially. In short, they want another MySpace, something that's immensely popular in the here-and-now. That's the idea they invested in, and all of our logic won't change that.
What SUP (or really, any corporation using typical corporation logic — 6A made the same mistakes) doesn't realize is that we're far more invested than they are, and certainly more than the average MySpace/Facebook user. They can sell and move on. Many of us have invested years on LJ, and have emotionally invested in friendships spanning the globe. We all know people here that we never would have met outside of LJ, and who we will likely lose contact with if we leave. MySpace and its ilk are a fad — an insanely popular one, but still a fad nonetheless. The users there are interconnected in other ways, through school or family or friends. They're not dependent on the site, and when they get tired of it they can move on without any real emotional loss. Most of us can't even decide whether or not to move to different websites, because we're so emotionally invested. LJ is an addiction, but you know it's bad when even your pusher is calling you on it. How long will it be before the MySpace generation grows up and moves on? A few years? A decade? Where as LJ has already been here for years, and until recently has been going strong. Yes, many of us aren't the kind of users you want to show investors, but we've got the numbers that you do want to show them. LJ is a long-term investment, not a get-rich quick scheme. And the only way anyone's going to come out ahead is if we somehow manage to convince SUP that we (as a community) matter enough to make-or-break their investment.
So far, this hasn't really been anything that hasn't been splashed around before. In fact, this would normally be the place where I make a suggestion like flouncing (which I have considered, to be honest), or a wave of temporary deletions. Nothing that hasn't been tossed around before. But really, doesn't that play into their hands? If we all leave, that means our nasty unwanted Gay Harry Potter Of Questionable Age Porn is off their servers and they're free to aim for a more mainstream audience who won't complain as much. If we temporarily delete, it's the same thing only with a different message: 'No matter how badly you piss us off, we still can't bring ourselves to leave for real.' That's definitely not what we want to convey.
Here's the new deal, the one that pretty much annoys us all. They want to make money off of us. There's a lot of ways to do this, but it seems no one Upstairs has the brainpower or wish to be creative, so they've chosen the old standby of using ads. Ad value is (I think) based off of the number of views. The more pageviews a website has, the more valuable adspace on it is. This is how they balance the scales now - they only win if the value of ads is greater than the cost of overhead. In other words, we're only worth our pageviews and the pageviews of our journals.
I don't think it's come down to a need for any mass action yet, not really. It's only been a day since their half-hearted, poor attempt at an explanation. Technically it's still possible that SUP will do an about-face and realize the error of treating us as anything less than the fully-invested community we are. Of course, it's possible that it'll rain gold coins in the night too. Just really, really unlikely. Our biggest handicap is that the main means of protesting for most users come down in the company's favor in one way or another. Every angry comment, every outraged entry, every check for updates only increases their hits for that month and makes LJ that much more valuable. The only way we're going to have any impact on the corporate decision-making process is if we maximize our cost and minimize our value. When it does come down to action, this is what I suggest:
0) If you're Plus, revert to Basic if you can. Paid remove the automatic debit.
1) Turn all of your entries private, except for a single one explaining what and why. This means that you continue to use server space, but your journal won't generate more pageviews than is necessary to see the notice and leave.
2) Don't visit LiveJournal more than you absolutely need to. If you have to, visit only your friends page. Post private entries via a third-party program like LJ-Sec as often as you normally would. Comment as little as possible. Minimize the pageviews you generate.
3) Encourage others to do the same.
If enough people do this, not only do we lose very little other than the time it takes to re-set so many entries, but they'll lose a lot, and they'll notice when their stats sink like the Titanic. LJ is the most tightly connected social network online; this is completely possible if enough people get behind it. For a site with 13 million accounts, only 1 million are active. Of that 1 million, a lot are probably from people who have multiple accounts. Even if only the population of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fandomcounts does this, that's still at least 3%, and 3% can be a lot of money if the stakes are high enough.
ljspeaks and my personal journal.I don't think I've ever posted directly here (
ljspeaks). I honestly didn't think I would. I'm not a 'community leader', whatever that means in this day and age. If I'm an activist, I'm a bad one because I tend to yell a lot and then do nothing. But after this latest SUP foul-up, a few things have become painfully clear. I thought I'd take a few minutes to share, and see what others think. But first, I want to lay out the basis of my idea, just so everyone can se where I'm coming from.First off, it's pretty clear that we're not wanted. We're too out-spoken, too independent, too niche, too not-mainstream (for lack of a better word). We're not the kind of users any sane company would want to show off to investors. The on-going cries of "but how will you define the character's age in my sexually-explicit art" is just an example of this. SUP does not want us. They want to make a fast buck (the "Russian businessman" approach I saw someone else mention), which means drawing in hordes of users who directly and immediately contribute financially. In short, they want another MySpace, something that's immensely popular in the here-and-now. That's the idea they invested in, and all of our logic won't change that.
What SUP (or really, any corporation using typical corporation logic — 6A made the same mistakes) doesn't realize is that we're far more invested than they are, and certainly more than the average MySpace/Facebook user. They can sell and move on. Many of us have invested years on LJ, and have emotionally invested in friendships spanning the globe. We all know people here that we never would have met outside of LJ, and who we will likely lose contact with if we leave. MySpace and its ilk are a fad — an insanely popular one, but still a fad nonetheless. The users there are interconnected in other ways, through school or family or friends. They're not dependent on the site, and when they get tired of it they can move on without any real emotional loss. Most of us can't even decide whether or not to move to different websites, because we're so emotionally invested. LJ is an addiction, but you know it's bad when even your pusher is calling you on it. How long will it be before the MySpace generation grows up and moves on? A few years? A decade? Where as LJ has already been here for years, and until recently has been going strong. Yes, many of us aren't the kind of users you want to show investors, but we've got the numbers that you do want to show them. LJ is a long-term investment, not a get-rich quick scheme. And the only way anyone's going to come out ahead is if we somehow manage to convince SUP that we (as a community) matter enough to make-or-break their investment.
So far, this hasn't really been anything that hasn't been splashed around before. In fact, this would normally be the place where I make a suggestion like flouncing (which I have considered, to be honest), or a wave of temporary deletions. Nothing that hasn't been tossed around before. But really, doesn't that play into their hands? If we all leave, that means our nasty unwanted Gay Harry Potter Of Questionable Age Porn is off their servers and they're free to aim for a more mainstream audience who won't complain as much. If we temporarily delete, it's the same thing only with a different message: 'No matter how badly you piss us off, we still can't bring ourselves to leave for real.' That's definitely not what we want to convey.
Here's the new deal, the one that pretty much annoys us all. They want to make money off of us. There's a lot of ways to do this, but it seems no one Upstairs has the brainpower or wish to be creative, so they've chosen the old standby of using ads. Ad value is (I think) based off of the number of views. The more pageviews a website has, the more valuable adspace on it is. This is how they balance the scales now - they only win if the value of ads is greater than the cost of overhead. In other words, we're only worth our pageviews and the pageviews of our journals.
I don't think it's come down to a need for any mass action yet, not really. It's only been a day since their half-hearted, poor attempt at an explanation. Technically it's still possible that SUP will do an about-face and realize the error of treating us as anything less than the fully-invested community we are. Of course, it's possible that it'll rain gold coins in the night too. Just really, really unlikely. Our biggest handicap is that the main means of protesting for most users come down in the company's favor in one way or another. Every angry comment, every outraged entry, every check for updates only increases their hits for that month and makes LJ that much more valuable. The only way we're going to have any impact on the corporate decision-making process is if we maximize our cost and minimize our value. When it does come down to action, this is what I suggest:
0) If you're Plus, revert to Basic if you can. Paid remove the automatic debit.
1) Turn all of your entries private, except for a single one explaining what and why. This means that you continue to use server space, but your journal won't generate more pageviews than is necessary to see the notice and leave.
2) Don't visit LiveJournal more than you absolutely need to. If you have to, visit only your friends page. Post private entries via a third-party program like LJ-Sec as often as you normally would. Comment as little as possible. Minimize the pageviews you generate.
3) Encourage others to do the same.
If enough people do this, not only do we lose very little other than the time it takes to re-set so many entries, but they'll lose a lot, and they'll notice when their stats sink like the Titanic. LJ is the most tightly connected social network online; this is completely possible if enough people get behind it. For a site with 13 million accounts, only 1 million are active. Of that 1 million, a lot are probably from people who have multiple accounts. Even if only the population of
fandomcounts does this, that's still at least 3%, and 3% can be a lot of money if the stakes are high enough.