On sinking ships and LJ...

[matgb]

OK, with all the fuss about the latest fandom controversy, many of those not involved in fandom at all (which, let's face it, is a huge chunk of LJ including me) might be wondering why it affects them and why it's more evidence towards the site dying off. Indeed, publicansdecoy posted a poll yesterday and followed it up today with another point about what he likes about Livejournal as a platform and network. And I don't disagree with him on any of those points.

Livejournal needs money

The problem is of course that Livejournal doesn't existin in a bubble; it's run by a company that seeks to make a profit, and has to be hosted in a fairly large and expensive datacenter. It has to be paid for. And ideally they need to keep making improvements to the site in order that it can stay competetive and keep attracting new users in order to replace the natural wastage of those that drift away.

Money needs users, and they're off

When I started using LJ, it seemed that most of my friends, and a huge chunk of new people I met, were on here. Those that weren't soon followed us here, so there's a big chunk of my friends list that are people I knew at university in Exeter, and people associated with them. That's cool. Except now, when I meet new people, the odds are they're not on LJ, they're on Facebook, or similar. Now, my new LJ friends are people I meet through meet ups organised on LJ. But people I know are joining Facebook all the time, in the way they used to join LJ.

Site usage is dropping, and has been for some time

Indeed, we've known for some time, and I've commented before, that usage has been slowly dying for a long time, and an observable pattern of people adding more and more friends just to have the same level of involvement is fairly standard. The usage numbers are dropping. New signups are dropping. The site was already dying off. That's before the management managed to scare off a big chunk of its revenue base (fandom) by being obfuscatory, duplicitous fools. In order for the site to continue to exist, the owners need to make money.  They're failing in this.  Now?

liz_marcs: The fat lady sure does sing, brad is leaving SixApart, and insomnia suggests that he don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. The site owner is bored and is leaving. To go work for Google it seems. Mark thinks it's because he's seen the writing on the wall, and we've been aware for some time he wasn't happy with the way things are.

Long term, the LJ we know is doomed

The introduction of adverts killed the (already stunted) growth of the site, fandom is now planning to leave in droves, and not just the HP slashficcers, but a huge chunk of those worried they'll be next. For those that aren't counting, a lot of fandom users have multiple, paid, accounts. Or had, anyway, a large number have let them drop.

Livejournal, as we know it, is doomed. Unless 6A can sort themselves out. Will it continue in some form? Undoubtedly. It'll probably get bought by Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft, when 6A finally go belly up.

And that's why I'm preparing to both jump ship, and make it easy for everyone to follow. There are services that replicate LJ utility, there are ways of keeping up with blogs on many platforms in a manner that's as easy as your friends list. They just require a bit of know how. So, when I've got time (and work has hit me with a bit of extra stuff), I'll begin to write up what I'm specifically doing. Because it'll be easier to be prepared.

Because I love this place, I love the way it's networked and let me meet a lot of cool people. And I hate to see it dying. But it is dying, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. So I want to keep you guys even after it's dead.

ETA: Posted a follow up at no_lj_ads, specifically linking to this post with a very well done set of graphs emphasising the points made above.

Comments

[rho]

I have a whole lot of thoughts about this issue, and really should either comment further, or make my own post about this at some point. For now, however, I will just state this: I understand that there is a whole lot of past enmity between Brad and Mark (insomnia). I take anything that Mark has to say about Brad with a very large pinch of salt.

[matgb]

Oh, known; I didn't mention it in this post because even I don't like repeating myself that often, and I've been a bit verbose today, but I think his enmity comes out just reading his post, didn't really need to flag it.

But I do think he's probably not far off saying that Brad's unhappy with what they've gone and has seen the way the site is going. It was him that inspired the checkbox tyranny resistance after all...

But yeah; your thoughts would be good to see ig/when you've time; I'd rahther the site wasn't dying, but I think we're passed that now.

[shakalooloo.livejournal.com]

Quitter.

[exmoor-cat.livejournal.com]

It's very definately a generation thing too. Looking at my f-list, I am not aware of anyone under the age of about 23-24. Facebook has pretty much swiped the custom by so thoroughly penetrating the university market.

AFAIK LJ has not done any market demographic homework, which gobsmacks me as this is like business marketing 101. One of the appeals of LJ is that it is not full of bells and whistles converting everyone into Pavlovian vampires or pirates. It is also a more community orientated and thesauric in nature.

The irony of this is that our generation of LJ users are usually the ones with the money, but it is not offering the quality product or tools, and I fear it will go further down the gimmick route, rather than re-organising and building for a sustainable social and artistic networking tool that places like DeviantArt do so well.

Am tempted to bung the above into one of the LJ Feeds

[matgb]

One of the appeals of LJ is that it is not full of bells and whistles converting everyone into Pavlovian vampires or pirates. It is also a more community orientated and thesauric in nature.

Ah, but that's just a different way of doing memes and quizzes, one that suits Fb better; some I like, some I dislike, but it's not so different from the people who perpetually post "what thingy am I" here.

You're right though, and the way you've explained the Fb problem is better than the way I have, and yes, the lack of marketing acumen does at times astound me, especially when they launched Vox, a service which essentially exists to compete with LJ and takes attention from it.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

They'd started Vox before they bought LJ. Better to own the competition than compete with it, I guess.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

They mentioned demographics a while back, telling everyone to put their dates of birth on their profiles. This was when they said Vox would be for older, less technical users, with LJ for the younger ones. Obviously it never occurred to them that their users get a year older with every passing year...

Still, check out the 3 or 5 year stats at Alexa...

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=http%3A%2F%2Flivejournal.com%2F

It doesn't look like LJ's dying there, and they're the kind of statistics advertises watch.

[andrewducker]

My friends list _definitely_ skews older - I have lots of SF fandom people on it, and older geeks. And that's fine by me - it's a great way to keep in touch with people and share ideas and links. Facebook doesn't fill that need at all, and having my own blog hosted elsewhere would lose me a lot of the things I care about.

[matgb]

having my own blog hosted elsewhere would lose me a lot of the things I care about.

What I'm working on is a 'best mix' solution, where you can host elsewhere but still be using LJ; something akin to cross posting but all cut and comments links go back to your blog; I don't want to 'leave', I just don't see the site being medium term viable :-(

I've also posted on the subject here:
http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/67369.html
Specifically in order to link to this:
http://pyrop.livejournal.com/743350.html

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

LJ is doomed? Aw crap, I was just starting to feel at home here.

:(

Should I start gathering email addresses from my f-list?

[matgb]

Naw, we're looking at a long, slow decline, not a sudden death; those of us that stay active might not even notice until very close to the end; as a going business concernI give it maybe 18 months, after that 6A will be in more serious trouble than they are now.

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

Ah, well that's not so bad then.

It's maybe a good thing that my f-list is small and perfectly formed. It should make it easier to keep in contact with folks if this place does a Titanic.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

* hug *

My worry is definitely what andrew says above. No matter how good the solution is that Mat sets up, there will always be some people who won't be bothered to move, there will be splintering, and it won't be pretty. I'm already seeing this in the fandom-related areas of my f-list... I'm losing stuff I care about because of this already, and moving elsewhere will only accelerate that.

[matgb]

Which is why I want to build something that can give you friends list style elements all on one place (an RSS aggregator built into a site, using something like Gregarious) and also promote and allow OpenID or similar support.

The feed aggregator can pick up on friends only content, and display like your friends page (or you can change the view from what I've seen), and hopefully userpics and similar can become cross platform as well.

The problem is that LJs syndication system is sucky, so people leaving are in many ways lost, and that's what we hope to build a prevention of.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

I think you're underestimating the power of inertia. I've been through a cycle of life and death across four websites/platforms so far, if you include LJ, and each time I do pick up new friends (and I'm especially grateful for YOU), but each time I lose more.

[the-mendicant.livejournal.com]

Can we change your name to Noah? Sounds like you're building an arc!

I'm such a technophobe, I just don't know if I'll cope with learning a whole new site - I've been here for about 6-7 years.

[paulgregory.livejournal.com]

These exist.

Friends List = "group lifestream from your friends".

See
http://mashable.com/2007/07/17/social-network-aggregators/

I suspect most of them that cope with LJ use LJ's RSS syndication.

I have my girlf's LJ feed in my Firefox-based RSS reader, and it shows friends-only posts whenever I'm logged into LJ (which is, by cookie, most of the time).

I'm not actually aware of any issues with this other than the lack of comments.

It would be possible for something to log onto LJ and harvest friends posts and comments, but fiddly due to the differing styles people use. And probably against T&Cs.

However, for the bulk of LJ friends' posts, I prefer to read it within the context of LJ. It is how people expect their writings to be read, and everything makes more sense that way.

For what it's worth, personally I will in future be posting anything public to my own ad-supported website and moving LJ to become much more friends-only and much more ephemeral - possibly even deleting stuff after 60 days.

[matgb]

group lifestream from your friends

Oooh! That's nice. Mashable was merely a site I'd heard of until very recently, and last few weeks I've been linked to loads on there, which means I probably ought to pay more attention to the place.

For various reasons, I'm not keen on RSS applications, I want things web based. This is partially because I never know what machine I'll be on one day to the next, partially because I regularly use my phone browser to read my friends page and gmail, and partially becauce I want things to be usable by people without much tweaking or effort on their part (because 90% of people won't do stuff).

I did play around with Fx based RSS stuff awhileback, but they really are bandwidth intensive, which given the shared nature of all my 'net connections is also an issue.

For what it's worth, personally I will in future be posting anything public to my own ad-supported website and moving LJ to become much more friends-only and much more ephemeral - possibly even deleting stuff after 60 days.

That's close to what I plan TBH, a small ad box or two and open to all. But I'll also be cross posting my public content (probably comments off but with an image embed counting them, there's a WP plugin). We hope to have a plugin that'll allow friends only content on a WP blog, whcih'll mean everything gets cross posted, and I can give family logins on my site which might mean they're more inclined to read stuff, etc.

But I'll not be deleting anything; your call, but I really hate it when that happens, on any site; I've been known to dig back into very old posts and comment discussions to find stuff, on my journal and elsewhere; I'm probably unusual in this but the thing I like about the web is free and open exchange of information, even if some of it is walled off.

Thx for the link, that might be very useful. More stuff to play with. But...

I'm looking to aggregate LJs and other blogs and journals; I'll also add in my facebook feeds &c I think. I'm not so much looking at following lots of social networks, more replicating and building a friends page; not sure that's the same thing, status updates may be Tweets, and the minifeed may be stuff about my friends, but I'm not sure I want them on my friends page, that's not really for ephemeral stuff, it's for stuff my friends wanted to write about...

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm certainly a bit of a stick-in-the mud and I'm not really the type to sign up to several bloggy sites at once. I tend to make my cyber-nest in one place and stay there until it really does go down the pan.

This is the main reason I haven't signed up over at FaceBook really. Hell, I only joined up here because you invited me and it seemed like the only way to keep in touch with you after you left the BHF! :)

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

I tend to make my cyber-nest in one place and stay there until it really does go down the pan.

Same here, and as I say, I've seen it happen before (the going down the pan) and nobody ever moves en masse to one new solution. Ever.

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

nobody ever moves en masse to one new solution. Ever.

No, I suppose it would be unrealistic to expect that.

Oh well, I'll just have to try and keep in touch with my f-list as best I can when the bell tolls for LJ. But as you say, it's inevitable that we'll lose contact with some people. :(

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Don't be disheartened, love. If it DOES all move to Facebook, at least I can kick your arse at scrabble ;)

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Keep a seat for me over there! :)

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Microsoft would mostly disagree with that. Once the IBM PC was just one of many choices of personal computers...

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I don't see how LJ and Facebook are at all equivalent and how one tells you anything about the other.

[matgb]

LJ has elements of a social networking site; it's primarily a blogging platform but the appeal for me is the combination of the two.

But in order to succeed, LJ needed to pick up those that wanted a social networking site; a lot of my earliest LJ usage was simply keeping touch with existing friends, something I can do on Facebook much easier.

The problem isn't that Facebook has taken over from LJ, the problem is that Facebook is taking on the new users that would have come to LJ; some of them would have remained as simply low usage networking types, reading their friends entries and commenting—those people now use Facebook walls to do that, etc.

Of my friends of university and new graduate age on LJ, all were on it before Facebook signed up; I rarely encounter 'new' LJ users the way I used to all the time.

To some people (those of us that don't "blog"), Facebook does what they wanted from LJ, and does it better. The quality of the people I meet thorugh LJ remaind better, but the quantity of useful contacts is dropping off; they've moved to Fb.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

To some people (those of us that don't "blog"), Facebook does what they wanted from LJ, and does it better.

I just didn't realise such people existed.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

They do. Well, did.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

They aren't. But where once everyone had LJ, now everyone has facebook. The people I work with (student age) mostly hadn't even heard of LJ, and those who had did dismissive handwaves.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I guess I come from a different background. No one I know in real life has ever heard of Livejournal. I always saw it a niche blogging platform for people who had a lot of online interaction already. Facebook, on the other hand, is deliberately aimed at people who don't really use the internet.

[matgb]

See I'm the complete opposite; I signed up here because nadriel had moved to London and he suggested it as a good way to keep in touch; my first post pretty much says "I'm not going to post much". A huge chunk of my early f-list were people I knew at University or similar.

It was a long time before I started adding people I didn't know in real life, over 100 of my friends list are people I know in reality. Sure, a chunk I met through LJ, but a chunk more I met first, or in clubs and similar. Partially because it's still fairly big as a network/platform in the goth scene in and around London I suspect.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

my first post pretty much says "I'm not going to post much".

Ah well, we have that much in common :)

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

my first post pretty much says "I'm not going to post much"

Ah, I had no illusions (http://el-staplador.livejournal.com/2006/01/14/)...

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Will what you're planning allow people to read their LJ friends' locked posts? As that's the only real reason to stay.

And then there's vice versa - will your system have locked posts and will their be a way to read them from LJ?

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll be interested to hear more about what you intend setting up.

If it does go, then I'm really going to miss LJ.

-x-

[0ct0pus.livejournal.com]

I'll be moving when LJ stops doing the blog host/social networking/rss feedhandler/image hosting/voice post collating thing it does now. Or plasters big fuck-off ads everywhere. Or when all my friends move elsewhere.

No other reasons.

[andrewducker]

Seen this?
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html

[malkavelli.livejournal.com]

Oh the irony. LJ has crashed for me three times whilst trying to read up on this.

[gaeriwitch.livejournal.com]

So you think Facebook will be the natural succesor (sp?) of LJ?
I haven't used it much yet but what about the communities in here? Does something similar exist on Fb (other than your network of friends and so on). Does it allow for blog posts with privacy settings or something similar?