Reasons to stay, reasons to leave—Livejournal has some strengths

[matgb]

OK, a fairly long post on the most recent news and another nail in LJ's coffin.  Those of you just interested in the future rather than the LJ trainwreck may want to skip to the second half.

Ages back, I was having a conversation with anildash over at no_lj_ads. He made an incredibly good point (about TypePad, but it applies equally to LJ) :

Me:Seriously, why use Typepad these days, when you can get cheaper WP hosting fully installed on so many platforms?

Anil:I can give you about a hundred reasons — less muss & fuss is a big one, but "won't fall over if you get dugg" is another one.

Today, this becomes a little more relevent. Y'see, LJ made the 'net news (again) today, liz_marcs got Slashdotted, for this excellent post and researchinto LJ Abuse's policy on hyperlinking. Short version. According to Alice, LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team, if a site you link to contains content that breaches LJs TOS, then you can have your account suspended (you'll get warned, but still). Even if the link is three years old. Even if the site has changed hands and is now something else (and yes, for example, I am thinking of selling the fuzzyduck domain, hmm, wonder who'd buy that?). This goes against accepted practice on any other blogging platform, indeed, it goes against the point of blogging.

This affects ALL of us

Because, as we've already seen, they've taken down (then apologised) literature discussion groups. Let's face it, I link to stuff I disagree with at times. I sometimes link to stuff I fundamentally, vehemently oppose. I have (not here, but on a previous platform), linked to the BNP manifesto in order to critique it. Slightly more to topic, there is a political party in, IIRC, the Netherlands, that advocate reforming child sex laws because there's nothing wrong with having sex with kids if it's consensual. According to Alice's statements, linking to such a site would be in breach of the LJ TOS, even if the link was in order to attack or denigrate. I quote from the TOS. A breach includes invading the privacy of another user by posting personal information. If I were, according to this interpretation, to link to a site that contained, say, your address or contact details (or, say, the contact details of a prominent person—this includes their work email address), then I would be breaching the TOS. I know of one LJer who has been TOSd (and then reinstated) for posting details from a WHOis lookup. According to this, linking to a WHOis lookup is now a breach of TOS.

WHOis is public information, I have a plugin that'll do it for me in Fx, I need to do it at times for work. Domain registrars can hide your address and provide forwarding data (mine does).  But Mat, I hear you say I don't blog like you do.  Um, yeah.  You know those quiz memes that have off site images, many of them hosted on dating sites?  They could get you in real trouble as well...

A caveat, but either way it's a big problem for LJ

This policy, if correct, is ridiculous. It's also effectively unenforceable, and badly thought through. One point though. I have no idea who Alice is. I don't recognise the name as an LJ staffer, she may just be a volunteer. Her statements might not be correct. Liz may be over-interpreting them (I don't think so personally, the answers seem pretty clear to me). If she's right, LJ either needs to change its policies (again) or, well, any of us that want to have serious discussions have to leave. If she's wrong? Well, LJ abuse hasn't got a good rep—I blame it on poor management and the unprofessional nature, they try to do too much, try to cover too many bases and are poorly trained for the role they've now got. Either way, LJ has a problem. A serious one. But, y'know, you've been reading my rants on this subject for awhile now (for those new, click the Livejournal tag...).

So...

My plans for 'jumping ship' (redux)

Discussions on this at minnesattva's prompted me to comment on what I'm planning. A fair few people have interpreted my ideas as me saying variously that

1. I'm leaving / abandoning Livejournal (I'm not)
2. That Facebook is a valid replacement and that I believe people are defecting there (I don't, they're not)
3. A distributed network means losing track of people on other servers (it really, really doesn't

So I thought I'd just, briefly, summarise my plans and where I'm at.

Caveat: Life has got in the way (the whole engagement thing), I've got work projects to complete, clients to please, etc. Plus, y'know, it's me, I'm a lazy and easily distractable bastard at the best of times. So I'm behind the notional schedule I set myself. Very behind. Ah well, no rush, better to get it right.

So, some clarifications.

Livejournal has two principle Unique Selling Points (USPs)

1. Post Level Privacy—at a granular level, I can choose exactly who reads each post I make, if I want to
2. The Friends Page—everything I want, including a bunch of off-site feeds, one one, easy to use aggregator, that I can even get to from my mobile phone browser

It also has a massive network of my personal friends and decent contacts and writers. But most of the latter could have blogs anywhere, LJ just makes it slightly easier, and in some cases it encourages insularity, some of us miss out on non-LJ content simply because it's not as easy. So, I want to replicate this, and, eventually, make it as easy, if not easier.

What I'm looking at for journalling/blogging

I'll self host a Wordpress. And create a walk through on how to set yourself up. And probably be able to give a chunk of people hosting space for their own if they want it (possibly at no cost, or possibly at a very small shared cost) I can't, currently, offer anything for post-level privacy, , but there is a plugin in the works through lj2wordpress—we might want people with experience of coding Wordpress plugins and/or just PHP to help out a bit with it at some point.

• Wordpress does offer password protection per post, if you want it—not ideal, but it'll do.
  
• There are cross-posting plugins that mean if I update at Wordpress, the post can also be put on my journal, with (theoretically) any cut text, etc, linking back to my blog.
  
• I can disable comments here, but use plugins that'll embed the number of current comments so you can see it on your friends page and there are plugins that, theoretically allow you (and me) to use LJ userpics as well.
  

So I won't leave, I'll just put my actual content in a place where I can control it, back it up, and know I'm in control of what's on it, it's not there at the sufferance of a barely trained abuse team on a server the wrong side of a major fault line. And due to the nature of Wordpress, I'll be able to do many, many things that I can't do here easily. And so could you. Drawback, of course, is things could fall over if you get Dugg or Slashdotted (and let's face it, Liz's post could've been something I'd done the digging for). But for 99% of the time, not something you need to worry about.

What I'm looking at for the Friends Page

Looking at a number of options, the best appears to be something called Gregarious. I've had it top of my list of things to test for about three weeks now. Um, yeah.

• It can take contenct from any site that releases feeds.
  
• It can even use a login process to take feeds from protected entries. So if your friends disappear off to InsaneJournal, Deadjournal, Not-the-GreatestJournal, Iziblog or stay here, you can still read their entries, all in the same place. 

Theoretically. It looks damn good, and foxfirefey speaks highly of it, but I haven't had the chance to look at it properly. I suspect I'll want someone to code a Firefox plugin or similar for it at some point, to allow people to easily add 'friends' from any site they're at. Imagine it; subscribing to the BBC, or Boing Boing, or that hot new blog someone set up to be as easy as friending someone, and be able to read it all in the same place, like you do your friends page. But you'd have complete control, and wouldn't be subject to the vaguaries of LJs feedreading (which can reject feeds for insane reasons at times). Again, hopefully we can have both a walkthrough if you want it for yourself, or I might be able to have multiple accounts using my install.

Alternately, I've been in contact with the developers at Spokeo,which also has the potential-they don't (currently) support LJ friends locked content, but could do so if there's demand. I may do a follow up post on that at some point.

As for the network

Well, this way, you get to stay with LJ, also meet DJ, IJ or even GJ users, and other bloggers using other platforms. And then? Have I mentioned brad's new project? He's calling it the Social Graph—typical of Brad, great idea, no idea how to market it to people so they 'get' what it's for. I'm not calling it that. I'm calling it a perfectly great way to run many (many) nodal points for a distributed social network, and have them all interact.

Imagine it, if you will. When you sign up for a new social network site (including sites like Flickr, Facebook, Delicious, etc),you can import all your contacts from all your other networks, and, if they want you to be able to, find out if they're there quickly and easily. I'd love for all my LJ friends to also add me on Facebook if they're there (hint: link in the profile and sidebar), but I also respect that some want to keep each separate—I don't really want to link up everyone on LinkedIn, that's a different service, which, well, I'm not using much.

Maybe, if we get this right, we can have it so you choose where to put your content. You choose how to aggregate the content of others. You do it quickly, and easily. You choose whter to trust as a primary platform a company like LJ, a friend running a node (*waves hand*), a new start up, or you get your own server.

But they can all interlink, all interoperate. It'd be like LJ, with the privacy you want, but encompassing the whole damn web.

I think that'd be cool. Will it work? Dunno. But the prognosis is good.

Let's reclaim the Web

I'll, um, get back to avoiding work on my bit, right?

Comments

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell... if that could work, that could be... wow...

If you need anyone to do any little bits of code, let me know... I'm not very good, but I'd welcome the practice...

[matgb]

Aye, if it works. It's a mix of foxfirefey's ideas, brad and others technology and a bit of marketing nous.

But yeah, I can't really code at all, but I think that could be a good thing, means I can (attempt to) concentrate on the 'selling' side, which is, really, what killed LJ.

Also? I hit the 'add friend' button at the exact same time I got the email from LJ saying you had. Weird...

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

If you want any help:
I'm currently studying computer science at Oxford (online course), have baby qualifications in Java and SQL, and helped holly_lama co-author a book on systems design and human-computer-interaction/management science. I've done bits of coding in other languages too. I'm also a fully paid up member of the Liberal Democrats ;)
I think this could genuinely be big, and I want to get involved...

[matgb]

r a book on systems design and human-computer-interaction/management science

Translating that into Mat: does that roughly equal usability? Because that's my biggest concern for any project, getting it to work is fine, but if it confuses the hell out of people they'll go elsewhere.

But yeah, pretty much, we're good. Only I'm swamped, so I really need to get the sites I'm supposed to be building for main job and side job done this weekend.

But everything is good, just, y'know, daunting.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

The book was about many things, but part of it was on working with users to make sure the program does what they want it to and does so in a usable way, yes...