Goin' down for the third time...

[liz_marcs]

Anyone else have a sneaking suspicion that ElJay is sinking below the waves?

Trying to get in for the past week has been a trip. (I know, I know...DDOS attacks galore, but still...)

Fort Knox is easier to get access to. Just sayin'.

Comments

[tazlet]

I've been having a terrible feeling about it.

[liz_marcs]

Part of my problem is that I haven't rally been on ElJay much in the past year thanks to RL. So, when I finally have time to do so, I feel like I'm pulling teeth.

[medie]

It does not bode well.And supposedly they're doing away with paid accounts sometime this spring so... I have the feeling I made the smart move with fandom_stocking when I did. I don't think it'll be around much longer.

And if it is a bunch of DDOS attacks, they seem to be pretty determined to keep LJ down. Last time it was implied to be a part of the Russian political situation and if it is, then I don't see that stopping anytime soon.

[gehayi]

Doing away with paid accounts? That's nuts. Paid accounts bring them half their income!

[medie]

I remember reading something about it in one of the news posts. It's apparently something to do with how they're changing the revenue structure (it was the one, I think, where they introduced the social capital thing) to shift it away from that. It sounded completely ridiculous to me, but apparently they were serious.

It just does not bode well to me.

[foxfirefey]

From what I've read, it's not that they're doing away with paid accounts entirely. It's more that they're moving towards more of a WordPress model, where you can get more features as a la carte add on options. That's based on some staff clarifications to the "no more paid accounts" statement. Paid accounts will probably still exist, and just be even more full featured, or so they say.

(And we don't know necessarily how much revenue paid accounts are anymore, I think the half their income part is only source confirmed from a couple years back. Lots of things could change in that time. On the other hand, they've cut down on the advertising displays, so who knows.)

[liz_marcs]

Wait...how...what?

I'm a bit mystified as to how that's possible to do away with paid accounts. What are they going to do? Go advertiser supported? I can't imagine anything worse.

As for the Russian political situation...yeah. From what I've been reading on ONTD_Political (one of the few ElJay communities I continue to follow), it's just getting progressively worse.

And since ElJay is pretty much Russia's window to the World Wide Web...

[curiouswombat]

The idea is to give everyone a starting level of account which is free - as now. Then you would pay for extras - like extra icons, access to extra layouts, extra space on Scrapbook and so on. So, much as at present, but using different terminology. The difference being that all accounts would then, in theory, be counted into what will be seen when trying to attract advertisers, just as all accounts on other sites like Facebook are, and possibly here too if they want to - I don't know enough about how Dreamwidth works. At least that is my guess about why they are changing how you buy stuff...

[medie]

They seem to be following the example of other, more popular, social media sites. The problem is, in doing so, they're stripping out pretty much everything that makes LJ attractive to their existing Western customer base. Which implies they've done enough market research to discern that the loss of said base won't impact their bottom line and, therefore, can be written off.

But apart from that, I really don't think they'll stand much of a chance to implement it. Some pretty powerful people would benefit from ElJay going down the tubes and I have the feeling they're in the crosshairs and know it.

[gehayi]

As far as I'm concerned, the site is all but dead. If it weren't for one site at which I post--just ONE site--I wouldn't even bother having an LJ account any longer, because the place is useless.

[liz_marcs]

I think I joked with someone over New Year's that I remember when missing one day of checking ElJay meant that I'd be scrolling my Flist for *hours.* Now I can cover an entire month's worth of posts on my Flist within an hour.

Unfortunately, fandom's pretty fractured between Dreamwidth and other journaling services.

Tumblr is also coming on strong. I have a Tumblr account, but I do not love it. There's not really any way to have a "conversation" between users. Just a bunch of people standing on soapboxes being butthurt over the cause du jour, "crying" about their "feels", or going "cray cray."

I don't consider myself a fogey, but I swear to God the average age on Tumblr is something like 15.

[curiouswombat]

Now I can cover an entire month's worth of posts on my Flist within an hour.

To be honest it is because if someone isn't around for a while they get out of the loop. So new people to old fandoms, or people in new ones, don't know you and don't friend you, nor you them.

Whereas I have gained about 30 new friends in the past year which has made up for the others, like you, who hardly ever post any more.

But it is a problem that LJ is so creaky at times, for a lot of my friends don't like using DW - I don't much - so if LJ ever does disappear I will have a lot more spare time on my hands!

[medie]

I don't consider myself a fogey, but I swear to God the average age on Tumblr is something like 15.

That's the mental age, actually. I swear, in order to post heavily over there, some people get their brains surgically removed. I've tried taking part in a few discussions over there and people I knew and discussed things with on livejournal are strangers. It's like they've completely regressed to teenagers incapable of actual discussion. They know all the right terminology and such, but try to discuss a character critically and it boils down to "but he's my faaaavorite". I tried getting into a s2 character arc for teen wolf and got reamed out for actually pointing out their argument was slightly one-sided. (I believe I 'ripped his guts out')

I've never seen them once talk like that on LJ.

Safe to say that pretty much any experiences I have with tumblr are going to be "huh, I wonder if I can find a screen cap I need" and nothing more.

[krait]

Heehee, your description of Tumblr sounds like my descriptions of Tumblr... :D I really do feel as if I'm surrounded by 13-year-olds when I venture in, and I cannot even express adequately how much I hate reading the SAME THING EIGHT TIMES because repost-the-whole-post-with-your-one-line-retort-tacked-on is the only way to have a 'conversation' on Tumblr! FAIL.

[fishsanwitt]

It has been insane trying to get in to LJ.

Thank goodness for Dreamwidth.

[ardath_rekha]

It makes me very glad that I've already long ago backed off all of the stuff I really wanted to save/keep from there. There will be a bit of sadness about losing certain character journals' "first homes" if it really does go belly-up, but it's just a nostalgia thing, really.

I'd been so hopeful when SUP bought LJ from Six-Apart. I'd really thought there was nowhere to go but up after some of the things S-A had pulled. Wow, was I wrong.

By some coincidence

[mcoletti.livejournal.com]

... I'm disabling my FB account, so I'll be leaning more on LJ. I'll try to stick it out due to "social networking inertia;" i.e., I'm not eager to start yet another social networking account.