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По просьбе

szhapokljak2@lj, архивирую.

Punching the monkey...

Hi, LiveJournal founder here. I haven't posted here in awhile, but
I figured it was time I made an appearance. If you don't remember any
of my previous rants over the past seven years or so, the summary is
that I hate advertising. Especially punching animated monkeys that
slow down my computer and distract me from what I'm reading.

Ever since LiveJournal started, we've had a very anti-advertising stance:

We don't put ads up on journals.

We don't spam you.

We don't even let YOU put ads on your journal, just in case
other people on the net see them and think they're from us, and we
don't want that reputation.

So how does LiveJournal continue to exist? (financially, etc...)

We've always asked users to pay. Normally websites make money from
advertisers, not from users. To entice people to pay, we've held back
some of the features from free users so there's a reason for people to
pay. And though not everybody paid, the small percentage of people who
did covered the costs for the entire operation.

This kinda sucks because:

Not all users want to pay. They're used to sites on the web being "free" because they're used to advertising.

Not all users can pay.

We want everybody to see all the fun features we have. As it is, only the paid users can appreciate them.

If more people could pay (even indirectly through looking at ads),
then we'd have more money to hire more hacker monkeys to bust out cool
features.

The thing people have been trying to beat into my head lately is that some users don't mind ads.
That's frickin' crazy talk to me because I can't stand the things, but
I guess it makes sense. (I also still don't understand why people would
want to use a web-based email client, whereas most people nowadays
don't even know of any alternatives! tangent...)

So in summary:

Some users can pay.

Some users can't.

Some users hate ads.

Some users don't.

The world doesn't universally recognize the awesomeness that is
LiveJournal because some of the awesomer stuff is locked up in
paid-only land.

My goal is to make everybody happy all the time. I always fail, because it's impossible, but it's a noble goal. So how do we make everybody happy?

Currently we have two main service levels:

	Don't Pay	Extra Features	No Ads
Paid Accounts	-
Free Users		-

What about the people who don't want to pay but want more features? Remember our impossible goal of pleasing you all.

So what we're planning on adding as an option (details still fuzzy) is a third level that users can choose if they want:

	Don't Pay	Extra Features	No Ads
Paid Accounts	-	+
New Level			-
Free Users		-

(It's in yellow to show it's new, not that it's golden or better.)

Key things to note:

Paid users won't see ads -- if
you're logged in as a paid user, you won't see ads, anywhere, even on a
journal of a user that has enabled ads. We're not going to double-dip
on you. If you paid us directly, we're not going to make more money by
putting ads in front of you.

Paid journals won't have ads -- anybody looking at any part of a paid user's journal won't see ads, logged in or not.

You can switch levels -- if you want to try out the ad level, go for it. You can switch back to free or to paid if you don't like it.

Free is staying -- we're not phasing out the free level.

The new level with ads is opt-in -- we won't throw ads on your journal without you switching to the new level.

You should control your ads -- we
want you to have a lot of control of what ads and what type of ads we
can/can't show on your journal, lest you offend your readerbase/etc.
These options won't be available right away, but it's what we're most
interested in developing over time, especially as we get feedback from
users.

We haven't worked out all the details
-- a lot of details haven't been figured out, so we'll be asking for
the community's input as things firm up. The last thing we want to do
is tick you off. If we tick you off, you leave, and then we're sad
because we're sitting around computers writing code for nobody.

We want you to kick and scream right now
-- because I'm sure we missed some stuff in this post. Please let us
know all your fears about how stupid/evil we are, so we can try and
show you otherwise. (We can say whatever we want in lengthy posts like
this, but actions speak louder than words....)

Pre-emptive FAQ time!

we chose Six Apart
because the other options weren't cool enough. The founders of Six
Apart were two people working together in their living room, much like
LiveJournal. We're growing together.
</blockquote>

So why should I keep paying now?

Paid users will still have higher limits/quotas than the
new level. (More storage, more pics, more bandwidth, etc...) If none of
that matters to you then it may depend on how you balance the
inconvenience of paying versus the inconvenience of ads.

What features will the new account level have?

We haven't worked out those details. The idea is they'll
have most of the paid user features but with less capacity, and without
the ability to, say, customize their journal style enough to be able to
remove ads. :-)

But when are you going to fix ____________? Like memories!

At any time a lot of stuff is broken or in flux as we
add/change features. It's regrettable, but it's life. We're actively
reworking a lot of broken stuff on the site right now (memories,
outgoing email architecture, etc...)
Joey is actively working on fixing memories.

Isn't there another way to make money? Why don't you sell more t-shirts or sell printed journals or go door-to-door?

I think we actually lose money on T-shirts, and they're
still way too expensive. Printed journals are okay, but there are
copyright issues when we want to sell you printed comments or the
contents of your friends pages. And then it's also very low margin.

What are you going to do with all that extra advertising money?

~~What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas...~~
It depends how
popular the new level is. Hopefully a fair number of users prefer it
over free and we'd be able to hire more programmers, buy more servers,
and just generally make LiveJournal better.

So now that you're making money from advertisers, what's to say you
won't stop listening to users as you spend an increasing amount of time
listening to the needs of your advertisers!?

That's my biggest fear! That's why when I introduced myself to our ad
person here at work, I gave my title as "Consumer Advocate" (much to
the amusement of everybody else at work). The LiveJournal team and I
are very reluctant to do anything which distances ourselves from users.
We'll do our best to keep the ad people in check. (to be fair, our ad
people are very pro-user to begin with, but they don't necessarily
understand LiveJournal users yet.... you're uh, unique. :-))
They've started posting in lj_ads, and will regularly, so go read that if you want to know more and give them feedback. (we'll also be posting to lj_biz and news, linking to relevants posts wherever they appear, so don't worry...)

If I'm a free user, will I see ads on my Friends Page? (sorry, the link is for the non-LJers who might be confused...)

No.

If I'm a free user, will I see ads on my friend's entry pages once I click off to their journal from my Friends Page?

Yes, if your friend has turned on ads. The way we see it:
your Friends Page is just your aggregator of all your
journals/blogs/news you read, and people on LiveJournal already read
lots of ad-supported websites. So if a new user comes to LiveJournal
and enables ads, and you find them interesting and want to read them,
how are ads on LiveJournal any less offensive than ads on a remote
site?

What about your Guiding Principle to avoid banner advertisements? What about things you've said in the past? Why should I continue to trust LiveJournal?

Well, we're not forcing it on users. It's purely a new
option that users can enable if they want, so we don't feel it's that
evil.

I am morally against ads. Why should I keep supporting/promoting LiveJournal? If you're going to
bring in so much money now, why should I keep volunteering for you?

That's a question you'll have to ask yourself. We're
not going to try and convince you to like ads or what we're doing, if
you're morally opposed to it. Hopefully you respect at least how we're
going about this.

What if I see an ad that is inappropriate?

We won't be accepting inappropriate ads, but the
definition of "inappropriate" is very subjective, so we want to
eventually let users control their ad options (if they want) and have
very easy ways to complain about ads they don't like. We won't launch
with this level of control right away, but we will work on developing
it over time. Of course, you could also just turn them all off too by
switching to another level.

Will free users ever get any new features or just ad and paid users?

Free users will continue to get new features. Our
model's always been to give out a little to get you addicted, then hope
you pay if you're happy with the service and want more.

And what about communities?

Currently communities can
choose either the free or paid level. Eventually community admins will
be able to opt-in to the new level with ads if they choose. We're
working on what we will offer communities in the new level. We'll talk
more about this later and solicit your suggestions.

Will any of my "personally identifiable information" be sent to advertisers? Will my email address be sold?

No.

Are ads going to slow down the performance of the site?

Not
any more than any other site with ads. Your browser will have more
stuff to download!, but LiveJournal's performance will be exactly the
same. The ads will be served from different machines, unrelated to the
LiveJournal servers. If you have a fast computer and fast Internet
connection, you won't notice.

Why is this being posted to lj_biz and not news?

lj_biz
is where we've historically discussed stuff like this, although we
regret we haven't been using it as much as we used to. It's also a
smaller audience for us to get initial feedback/questions/fears/etc, so
when we do our news
post it'll be more comprehensive. Also, we like to reserve news for
stuff that's available immediately, not plans for the future. Plans for
the future are better in lj_biz and lj_dev. Please share this post with your friends and others that might be interested if you don't think they read this community.

When are you launching the new level?

Not for another month or so. We're trying to do it very carefully,
taking our time, trying to get everybody's feedback incorporated. I'm
sure it won't be perfect at launch, but we'll continue to improve it
over time, as we have with all the other levels and features. Check
back here and in news for more information, and in the meantime leave
your feedback in the comments below.

How can I trust any of this information?

I guess you can't. I'm just the old fogey poking my head in again
with my ideals. It's easy for me to make statements, but like I said
earlier, actions speak louder than words. Don't just blindly trust me
... wait and see. We're working hard to do this in a way that won't
suck, and we're going to listen to you and do what we can to make
sure we make as many people happy as possible, even if we can't please
everyone. Check back in later to make sure we're being nice.

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dm_krylov

2006-03-08 11:16 pm UTC
(ссылка)

That
would be changing the rules big time after the game has started. I and
my friends have been writing here for several years. Sure, each of us
didn't matter but collectively we made it happen and now there is a new
element which none of us would like.

In a word, I don't think it's fair to the users.

I
also think it's not a good business move. In the long run it will LJ
just like any othere cheap site. It will distract users and in
particular distract users that make LJ what it is. Do you guys really
want it?

(Ответить)(Ветвь дискуссии)

	atyourplacein10 2006-03-09 04:19 am UTC (ссылка)
	Myspace was recently sold for $850 million. No offense, but I don't think that you have the scope to see what a good business move is, in this business. (Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	dm_krylov 2006-03-09 06:01 pm UTC (ссылка)
	What does this have to do with the issue? I assume that you do "have the scope" to understand that a $850 million business can have a cheap public image. Let me ask you also: do you really want adds in your journal? (Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

atyourplacein10

2006-03-09 06:11 pm UTC
(ссылка)

You aledged that this was a terrible business move. I gave you evidence to the contrary

Also,
perm account! I'll never have to see them! However, if I didn't have a
perm, wanted more features, but didn't have the money to pay for an
account, I might want to see ads, in order to get features. This plan
will allow for that.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

dm_krylov

2006-03-09 06:42 pm UTC
(ссылка)

That's
if you judge in $$ only and in the short run. I am trying to get across
to you and the author of the post that the current price on the market
isn't the only and not necessarily the best indication of successful
business planning.

Moreover, the price you mentioned is compared
to what? It may be a revelation to you, but you really need to compare
the average price over a period of time with and without adds for this
particular site, LJ. This is a projection, and I am trying to give you
the considerations that will have to go into this projection.

In this case you better not argue for the majority of LJ users. You are not one of us.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

atyourplacein10

2006-03-09 06:47 pm UTC
(ссылка)

Okay,
if you want to believe that 6a, as a company, made these decisions with
no regard to business sense whatsoever, that's your perogative. Seems
unlikely to me.

If you honestly believe that they're doing it
with no regard to the userbase whatsoever, you're wrong. All of the
people that were part of LJ before 6A *are* part of the userbase, and
many of the people that have come along since have shown, at least to
me, to have the same sense of pride in LJs community and product. And
in fact, several of the people that have been hired to work with LJ
since the takeover are long time LJ users and volunteers. So 6A's model
of running this company is not that far of a leap from LJs was, except
that LJ, self-admittedly, didn't know how to handle the business aspect
of it.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

dm_krylov

2006-03-09 07:01 pm UTC
(ссылка)

It
appears to me that the decision to use adds doesn't take into
consideration certain notions that the client base has about LJ. I
wouldn't know how 6A makes its decisions, I am just trying to point out
certain aspects that apparently were either not considered at all or
were not given appropriate weight. Of course, this is just my opinion
and of course the company will do what it wants. I am just pointing out
that the business success LJ's had hinges on the sense of community. If
this sense of community goes away so will the success. In particular
there is any number of similar sites that don't run adds and if I and
my Russian friends decide collectively that LJ no longer meets our
criteria of a community we will simply take off from here. In fact
there is this trend now, people have been switching to other sites, and
this particular move will aggregate whatever misgivings Russian users
may have about the current policies.

You say "self-admittedly". Does this mean that you were/have been part of the team?

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

atyourplacein10

2006-03-09 07:14 pm UTC
(ссылка)

LJ,
self-admittedly. Meaning that LJ (specifically Brad), has admitted to
not having the business-sense needed to continue running LJ
successfully. No, I have never been part of any decision making body on
LJ.

I do volunteer for LJ, and I do work closely with some of
the employees. And I trust their judgement when they say that this is a
necessary thing, and that this is really the best solution to an ugly
problem. In some ways, it was a leap of faith for me. But it also makes
sense- I don't think that the business people are self-sabotaging.

And
it's my understanding that many users aren't leaving over features, and
friends, not over a lack of community. People leave because all of
their new friends are on MySpace, or because they get more *insert
feature here* on GJ. These are both things that LJ hopes to combat by
making themselves more competative in terms of features and attracting
new users. Yes, the old-heads are important, and will continue to be.
But if we have this huge expensive setup, and continue losing new folk
to other sites, the old die-hards are all we'll have left, and it wont
be enough to keep the site going. And that's a sad fact, but a true one.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

dm_krylov

2006-03-09 08:25 pm UTC
(ссылка)

If
you volunteer for them and "trust their judgment" you have a different
set of interests from most LJ users. Which explains to me at least, why
you would argue for a change to worse as perceived by most users. Today
you don't have the adds, tomorrow you do - you can't possibly convince
people that's to their advantage. Business people are not
self-sabotaging but many of them have a very narrow set of issues their
are capable of perceiving. That can and often does lead them to wrong
decisions. I am afraid, this can be one of them.

Your
description of why people leave LJ flies in the face of what I know and
what people who study LJ say. There are trend-makers here and if you
loose them, you loose all users. You can get more revenue and generate
more ads for LJ, but that's not how people assembled here in the first
place and I don't think it's how you can rebuild LJ.

In a word,
you are arguing from the standpoint of money alone, I am arguing from
the standpoint of what LJ is. It is a web-based community. In a sense
your argument is much like that of a developer who comes in and builds
new houses where there used to be a nice livable community.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

atyourplacein10

2006-03-09 08:48 pm UTC
(ссылка)

I
am not arguing from the standpoint of money alone, by any means. I care
about the many communities I'm a part of on LJ, both in terms of
<^>communities and organically grown groups of users.

In
any sense, the distress that ads place on the LJ community is a
perception. They can choose to perceive ads as a terrible thing that
will kill LJ, or they can see it as part of internet life that caught
up with them (and what do they care anyway, b/c they either wont be
able to see them, or will glance right past them).

If they
choose the former, then yes, we'll lose a significant portion of the
userbase over this decision. I contend, however, like many other of the
challenges that has been faced by LJ (remember that people said these
same things over the buyout, the end of invite codes, the beginning of
invite codes, times when connectivity was shit, etc etc), the community
aspect of LJ will overcome the less userfriendly aspects.

Maybe
I'm wrong, and there wont be a means in 6 months (or a year, or
whatever) to tell me that I was. In the mean time however, saying that
this is going to kill LJ is speculation, whereas saying that this
probably won't be that big of a deal in 6 months is based in past LJ
experience.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

dm_krylov

2006-03-09 09:16 pm UTC
(ссылка)

I
am not arguing from the standpoint of money alone, by any means. I care
about the many communities I'm a part of on LJ, both in terms of
<^>communities and organically grown groups of users.
So far your arguments have been only for money.

In
any sense, the distress that ads place on the LJ community is a
perception. They can choose to perceive ads as a terrible thing that
will kill LJ, or they can see it as part of internet life that caught
up with them (and what do they care anyway, b/c they either wont be
able to see them, or will glance right past them).
What do you
mean, perception?! If you use this kind of argument there is no sense
in continuing, since both you and I can call anything we want a
"perception" and claim that we know better than other people. Btw, your
saying "glance right past them" tells me that most likely you have no
idea how advertisement works.

If they choose the former,
then yes, we'll lose a significant portion of the userbase over this
decision. I contend, however, like many other of the challenges that
has been faced by LJ (remember that people said these same things over
the buyout, the end of invite codes, the beginning of invite codes,
times when connectivity was shit, etc etc), the community aspect of LJ
will overcome the less userfriendly aspects.

Maybe I'm wrong,
and there wont be a means in 6 months (or a year, or whatever) to tell
me that I was. In the mean time however, saying that this is going to
kill LJ is speculation, whereas saying that this probably won't be that
big of a deal in 6 months is based in past LJ experience.
None
of what you mentioned pertains to an intrusive ad policy. In reality
there is no past experience in LJ to base this decision upon.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

atyourplacein10

2006-03-09 09:27 pm UTC
(ссылка)

What
do you mean, perception?! If you use this kind of argument there is no
sense in continuing, since both you and I can call anything we want a
"perception" and claim that we know better than other people.

Fact: LiveJournal will soon have ads.
Negative perception: OMG The sky is falling! This is the end of LJ as we know it, etc. etc. *runs away from LJ*
Positive
(ish) perception: Well, can't run a site on the benevolance of others
forever. I guess now some people will have to tolerate ads.

The
negative perception is a self-fulfilling prophesy, in a way, because
people right now are planning to leave on the *perception* that things
will be bad, not on things actually being bad.

If you don't think that's a valid point worth arguing because it deals with perception, than don't argue it ;)

And
no, this isn't the exact situation as any of the ones I listed, and
thus, is not an exact measure of what might happen. And in fact, that's
very rarely the case, where we have exact history on which to base
possible outcomes. However, I'm speaking of the reactions we've had in
the past, which aren't irrelevant to current reactions.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

dm_krylov

2006-03-09 11:23 pm UTC
(ссылка)

What
you call "negative perception" is the fact that most users won't like
what LJ is about to do. I just think that what you put forth as
"arguments" aren't them. Also, you haven't answered any of my points
about the community and the fact that LJ isn't just the hard drive
space and the servers, but also people who write in it. (Saying, "I
like communities" is an answer only in your universe of "perceptions".)

So, thank you for your time. I don't see a point in any further discussion.

(Ответить)(Уровень выше)

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