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

[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.