Discontent Strike
Mar. 20th, 2008 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynDiscontent Strike
If I didn't post for a day, would anyone actually notice?
Nonetheless, I'm going to participate in the content strike on LJ tomorrow. I won't be reading or posting to LJ on March 21, 2008.
I'm aware that LiveJournal is run as a for-profit business. So far as I know, it's been one since I signed on six years ago. I don't object to companies making sound business decisions to promote their own best interests, even if those actions are at my personal expense. That's life. TANSTAAFL and all that.
What bothers me about SUP's decision to stop offering Basic accounts is that it's a stupid business decision. If this move were going to allow LJ to grow and develop as a community and a business, I'd be fine with it. But it's not. It's going to hurt their profitability and cause their user base -- basic, paid, and ad-supported -- to shrink. Because people like me who pay for our accounts want our writings to be read by our friends, and we really don't care whether our friends pay or not. We just want the service to be available and easy to use by anyone with Internet access. Eliminating Basic accounts makes it a little harder to use, and a little harder for people to decide they like it and they want to pay for it.
It's not the collosal stupidity that OpenDiary pulled off, where they ultimately drove off the service literally everyone I knew except Krud. Unpaid "Plus" accounts are still available -- they're ad-supported versions of Paid, essentially. LJ isn't forcing conversions of existing Basic accounts to Plus (yet). As stupid business decisions go, it's pretty minor.
But it's still a mistake.
I don't know if seeing a one-day dropoff in site traffic will help SUP realize that it was a stupid decision and fix it. Probably not. But it might help, so I'll go along with it.
*
In unrelated news, I started exercising again on Tuesday, after three weeks of enforced time off due to illness. I'm still a teeny bit sick -- Diet Coke still doesn't sound good, and I'm still dragging a little more than usual -- but I'm mostly healthy.
It was tempting not to start again. To give up exercising entirely and get back that hour or so of my life that exercise takes up. There's a symmetry in it: John inspired me to exercise in the first place, so it would make a certain amount of sense to quit now that we're not together any more.
But I didn't. I don't really know why. Even for the last two weeks while I was recuperating, I've been doing long walks of one to three miles, just to do something a little active. It's not that easy a habit to break, I guess.
So I jogged on Tuesday night. I only managed my neighborhood circuit of 1.2 miles, but I was happy to get that. Last night I did 20 minutes on the exercise bike and then walked the neighborhood circuit afterwards, because it was a nice evening.
And stretched.
I've been doing very little stretching lately and I notice my lessening flexibility more than anything else. How long and how hard I exercise is often a matter of willpower as much as physical difficulty, but not being able to hold a split for 30 seconds is purely a matter of how flexible I am.
I can still manage sidesplits, but they're harder than they had been. And sitting crosslegged is uncomfortable. What? What's up with that? Hopefully it'll improve again as I get back into the groove.
Hopefully I wil get back into it, and not use the long break as an excuse to give up. So far, so good.
If I didn't post for a day, would anyone actually notice?
Nonetheless, I'm going to participate in the content strike on LJ tomorrow. I won't be reading or posting to LJ on March 21, 2008.
I'm aware that LiveJournal is run as a for-profit business. So far as I know, it's been one since I signed on six years ago. I don't object to companies making sound business decisions to promote their own best interests, even if those actions are at my personal expense. That's life. TANSTAAFL and all that.
What bothers me about SUP's decision to stop offering Basic accounts is that it's a stupid business decision. If this move were going to allow LJ to grow and develop as a community and a business, I'd be fine with it. But it's not. It's going to hurt their profitability and cause their user base -- basic, paid, and ad-supported -- to shrink. Because people like me who pay for our accounts want our writings to be read by our friends, and we really don't care whether our friends pay or not. We just want the service to be available and easy to use by anyone with Internet access. Eliminating Basic accounts makes it a little harder to use, and a little harder for people to decide they like it and they want to pay for it.
It's not the collosal stupidity that OpenDiary pulled off, where they ultimately drove off the service literally everyone I knew except Krud. Unpaid "Plus" accounts are still available -- they're ad-supported versions of Paid, essentially. LJ isn't forcing conversions of existing Basic accounts to Plus (yet). As stupid business decisions go, it's pretty minor.
But it's still a mistake.
I don't know if seeing a one-day dropoff in site traffic will help SUP realize that it was a stupid decision and fix it. Probably not. But it might help, so I'll go along with it.
*
In unrelated news, I started exercising again on Tuesday, after three weeks of enforced time off due to illness. I'm still a teeny bit sick -- Diet Coke still doesn't sound good, and I'm still dragging a little more than usual -- but I'm mostly healthy.
It was tempting not to start again. To give up exercising entirely and get back that hour or so of my life that exercise takes up. There's a symmetry in it: John inspired me to exercise in the first place, so it would make a certain amount of sense to quit now that we're not together any more.
But I didn't. I don't really know why. Even for the last two weeks while I was recuperating, I've been doing long walks of one to three miles, just to do something a little active. It's not that easy a habit to break, I guess.
So I jogged on Tuesday night. I only managed my neighborhood circuit of 1.2 miles, but I was happy to get that. Last night I did 20 minutes on the exercise bike and then walked the neighborhood circuit afterwards, because it was a nice evening.
And stretched.
I've been doing very little stretching lately and I notice my lessening flexibility more than anything else. How long and how hard I exercise is often a matter of willpower as much as physical difficulty, but not being able to hold a split for 30 seconds is purely a matter of how flexible I am.
I can still manage sidesplits, but they're harder than they had been. And sitting crosslegged is uncomfortable. What? What's up with that? Hopefully it'll improve again as I get back into the groove.
Hopefully I wil get back into it, and not use the long break as an excuse to give up. So far, so good.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
how
Date: 2008-03-20 07:55 pm (UTC)over the company books, one can
be quite sure that no longer offering
ad free free accounts is a stupid
business decision?
Re: how
Date: 2008-03-20 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-20 08:47 pm (UTC)or because you assume they are dishonest
books?
I dont know...I do not understand this
feeling about lj but it may be that a lot
of people go around with a chip on their
shoulder to start with and then this
becomes a kind of conditioned response
to assume they are being cheated...
by everyone probably in life.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-20 09:03 pm (UTC)Statistics exist that might help make the decision though, things like 'how many free users choose to upgrade on their own?' and stuff like that. That's more market research than accounting, though.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-20 09:16 pm (UTC)likely a tad too much
let each feel it as they will...
Re: how
Date: 2008-03-20 10:57 pm (UTC)Now, this isn't the disaster OpenDiary made of it: you can still get a new ad-supported free account. So they'll probably be okay. I'd just like a way to signal to businesses that often the best way to make more money isn't as simple as "raise prices".
But you are quite right: I was much too forceful in my opinion in this post. I think it's a mistake, but "stupid" is an overstatement. And we'll probably never know who was right, me or them, because in the real world there are so many other variables that come into play that you can't really isolate which ones were the critical factors.
annoyances
Date: 2008-03-20 11:05 pm (UTC)pass them on to someone or even in a small percent
in these responses here which were unnecessary
so I cannot without ,maybe not hypocrisy which is
too strong a word, I cannot without a certain
failure of imagination and sympathy criticize anyone
else for taking "it" out on livejournal.
for example today a travel agents error set me back
500 on my jerusalem trip