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

[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.