| No more Basic Accounts |
[Mar. 12th, 2008|05:26 pm] |
I'm on SUP's LiveJournal Advisory Board. Apparently SUP just killed the Basic ("Free") accounts. Before my commentary, some history of LJ account levels:
When I started LiveJournal, there were two account levels:
- Free Account -- no ads, no cost, but minimal features.
- Paid Account -- no ads, costs money, get everything.
The paid users, while minimal, paid enough to keep the site running, and brought in enough revenue to keep growing the site, and paid our salaries. The free users, while not paying, were extremely valuable because they produced the content that the paying users were there to consume. You know, the whole network effect thing? Anyway....
When SixApart wanted to do advertising, they made a new account level in the middle that users could choose, and also renamed "Free Account" to "Basic Account" to disambiguate what "Free" meant. Now we had:
- Basic Account -- no ads, no cost, but minimal features. (the old "Free Account")
- Plus Account -- ads, no cost, medium feature set.
- Paid Account -- no ads, costs money, get everything.
I was happy with this, because it was optional and ads would only be on their journals, and paid users would never see them. In theory. In practice, ads started leaking all over the site and paid users would see them whenever they logged in because they no longer had their cookies saying they were paid. The day SixApart decided that the site itself (not user's journals, but the chrome of the site itself) would have ads was a sad day for me... I cried a little tear.
And today, SUP has apparently removed Basic accounts altogether:
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=38&view=full
...
"Basic Account is an option available to accounts which were created before March 12, 2008. No account created after this date can be turned into a Basic Account."
... I advised against this (when I heard a rumor about it awhile back). I hadn't heard anything recently about it. Perhaps they interpreted my advice as "well, okay, then maybe we'll at least grandfather the existing Basic users, and not convert them all to Plus..."
In any case, SUP apparently sees no value in freeloaders not looking at ads, not paying, and oh wait... producing most the content for other members to read, other members who are looking at ads and paying for their accounts.
Let's hope my permanent account is grandfathered.
Yours truly,
Brad Fitzpatrick
LiveJournal Advisory Board Member |
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| LJ + SUP party tonight |
[Dec. 3rd, 2007|11:57 am] |
It's Monday night drinking night, but instead of El Rio, Parea, or the Velvet Cantina, I think everybody should go to the LJ + SUP party....
What: LiveJournal + SUP Party.
When: Monday night, 6-9pm.
Where: 111 Minna Gallery (map)
Why: Free booze & a goat.
It's kinda early, but we can go elsewhere after. |
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| I, for one, welcome our new Russian Overlords. |
[Dec. 2nd, 2007|06:49 pm] |
Привет!
So by now I guess you've all heard the news: SUP bought LiveJournal from Six Apart.
This is pretty cool because:
-- They're ridiculously excited about LiveJournal, and have been for awhile (they previous purchased advertising rights in Russia, but ended up doing a bunch of Russia-specific LJ development as well)
-- They want to throw a lot of resources at LiveJournal in terms of product development and engineers.
-- "LiveJournal.com, Inc." now stands alone again, focusing on nothing but LJ.
-- Sounds like I'll have more LJ influence (via new role as advisory board member) than I've had recently.
And to note:
-- I just found out about this last week and don't have much more details than I've read in the news posts. I definitely wasn't involved in this.... this all happened after I left Six Apart.
-- I get no fatty payout via SUP, SixApart, my non-liquid SixApart stock (if this increases 6A's value), or any other means. I wish I did.
-- Goats have an average life expectancy of 12 years. They can live as long as 17 years. Frank's still good.
-- I'm still not migrating my journal. (people keep asking me every time something on LJ changes)
-- "In Soviet Russia, SUP buys you." (courtesy ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) coffeechica)
Now I get to sit back and watch all the community reactions and conspiracy theories. I can't wait to see what everybody hypothesizes about the Kremlin, Jews, etc. Always fun to watch. |
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| [insert SUP questions here] |
[Dec. 19th, 2006|10:09 am] |
Since I can't seem to prevent people from commenting in my journal with off-topic questions about SUP, I hereby designate this post to be the SUP discussion area. So then at least the questions will be on-topic.
And the previous mmap() post is now friends-only.
If you're polite and ask a good question, I'll answer.
If you're angry and just want to fight, please do it elsewhere, not in my personal journal.
So please, ask good questions.... |
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| LiveJournal, SUP, Russia links |
[Nov. 1st, 2006|02:29 pm] |
Good links to understand why people are concerned about the LJ/SUP deal, and to understand blogging in Russia in general:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/25/opinion/edmorozov.php
(found via this post, also good)
I wish I could calm people down, but I realize the political fears/implications of this are way too big for me to make much of a difference.
But I'm a sucker for pain, so....
Let me present another point-of-view, based entirely on my own views/observations, that's a little less of a conspiracy theory:
- The Russian Internet boom is overdue. There's a lot of money to be made.
- Andrew Paulson is a businessman. He likes to make money. He recognizes the above.
- Andrew Paulson sees LiveJournal is really popular in Russia, and LJ could be used to bootstrap a bunch of other Internet services (do you smell "portal"?). Imagine: LJ accounts are also XXXX accounts. Or LJ usage is a "service of SUP", so when SUP does something different, you now know/trust SUP ... "oh yeah, SUP, the LiveJournal people, they're cool! I'll try out this other SUP thing...." etc. But needs money to do it. Talks to Mamut...
- Mamut, more than anything, likes to make money. He owns a bunch of stuff. Him investing in SUP is probably chump change. Why not do it? Sure, he's politically connected, so you can make the argument that investing in blogs is just a way to shut them down, but then how does he make money? Lay on the conspiracy theories, but I don't care... it doesn't make any sense. I believe Mamut at the end of the day wants to make money, not shut down blogging as a favor to the Kremlin. Because shutting down blogging is futile and he'd realize that.
- SixApart recognizes how popular LJ is in Russia, but we can't make any money from it, nor can we make it much better. The service is still so slow, hosted entirely in the US. (latency of 260 ms * 20-30 requests in series.... not fast!). Even if we hosted the public images and css/js in Russia and kept the private data/databases in the US and served the private data from the US, the performance would go up a ton. It'd be one 260 ms request and 19-29 30 ms requests.... do the math. We could then compete better with Russian-hosted services which would feel faster to Russians. Also, we can't do SMS or voiceposting in Russia. And we've never successfully dealt with a credit card processor in Russia. Or Yandex Money, which only has docs in Russian. Or Russian advertising for Plus users. Working with a Russian company for this makes total sense for us. They promote LJ in Russia and sign up users for us, deal with payments, SMS/voicepost/etc ... everybody wins. We get happier users that can actually pay if they want, and they get promotion for SUP, which later will be something bigger than just LJ.
- ...
etc.
A lot less interesting than the KGB doing a crack-down on bloggers, sure, but you can follow the money at least:
LJ promotes SUP, so SUP can be popular and make money later.
SUP promotes LJ, so LJ's both better in Russia and can also make money there.
Do I expect this post to calm people down? No. Not entirely. But I'll post more later. And the more you know, the less interesting it'll all seem. |
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