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.

[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

[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.

[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?

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

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

[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?