Hey, LiveJournal! Listen UP!
Jan. 21st, 2012 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fanciful_museI just got done reading this - http://www.fastcompany.com/1809674/the-return-of-livejournal
The part that really got to me was this:
What? Do you now have to learn the hard way, too?
Linden Lab, owner of Second Life, decided to change things to attract new users from Facebook, amongst other social networking sites. They made massive changes, including a new viewer that the majority of current users hated. They didn't start listening to their current user base until they'd hemmorrhaged so many paying users that they made a hemophiliac on aspirin with a knife wound to the liver look positively healthy.
Just like Second Life, LiveJournal has viable alternatives out there where the established users are listened-to. The primary service offering the well-loved interface is Dreamwidth, and unless you want to literally hand them thousands of dollars' worth of business, you'd better stop with the faulty business plan of ignoring the users you have in favor of users you may have in the future.
The part that really got to me was this:
"LiveJournal's leadership has made it clear that their future American business strategy lies in generating new traffic rather than catering to the service's current small-but-loyal membership."
What? Do you now have to learn the hard way, too?
Linden Lab, owner of Second Life, decided to change things to attract new users from Facebook, amongst other social networking sites. They made massive changes, including a new viewer that the majority of current users hated. They didn't start listening to their current user base until they'd hemmorrhaged so many paying users that they made a hemophiliac on aspirin with a knife wound to the liver look positively healthy.
Just like Second Life, LiveJournal has viable alternatives out there where the established users are listened-to. The primary service offering the well-loved interface is Dreamwidth, and unless you want to literally hand them thousands of dollars' worth of business, you'd better stop with the faulty business plan of ignoring the users you have in favor of users you may have in the future.
