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The 100th day

Mar 12, 2008 18:57

Today marks the 100th day since we announced SUP's purchase of LiveJournal from Six Apart, the formation of LiveJournal, Inc, and goals for the first 100 days. We've made some amazing progress since that announcement, and we're really proud of what we've accomplished in such a short period of time: the team in the U.S. is growing, we've gained a ( Read more... )

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Basic accounts jasonshellen March 13 2008, 00:46:10 UTC

Hi, I'm Jason Shellen, VP of Product Development for LiveJournal. I just wanted to clarify LiveJournal's stance before there is any further misunderstanding about what we are trying to do. An FAQ about the account levels was updated prior to our news post. It states ( ... )

vakkotaur March 13 2008, 17:28:28 UTC

Damn straight!

Sneak it by, then lie is not going to help, as has hopefully become obvious.

I suppose the sneak by was to prevent a flurry of free basic account creation. But the reputation damage taken by being sneaky is more than the basic account creation storm would have caused. I suspect most of those basic accounts would be "just in case" and would have been mostly dormant - so very little actual revenue "loss" from them not having ads. Making up the reputation damage will be much more expensive. "One 'awshit' wipes out a thousand 'attaboys'." is how I've heard it put. And after running the attaboy deficit into at least the tens of thousands over the last year or so, they just dug the hole even deeper.

twisted_times March 19 2008, 18:09:46 UTC

Quite right. In any sphere of business, a customer who receives poor service is fifteen times more likely to tell their friends about it than if they had a good customer service experience.

SUP have just shot themselves in the feet. Both of them. Twice each. With a Howitzer.

Re: Basic accounts newbasicjournal March 14 2008, 04:38:14 UTC

Own your fucking decisions, man.

I love you even more than I love Captain Picard. Seriously.

Re: Basic accounts propopdan March 13 2008, 20:10:21 UTC

hey!!! long time no see! -quasidan

Re: Basic accounts brighty11 March 14 2008, 02:10:29 UTC

I think I kind of love you.

Re: Basic accounts predestinedlove March 14 2008, 12:19:12 UTC

THANK YOU. This pretentious double-speak is one of the reasons I will NEVER pay this site to use it.

GOT THAT, OFFICE DRONES? I'M NEVER GIVING YOU MONEY TO USE THIS SITE.

EVER.

Re: Basic accounts clocktowerkiss March 16 2008, 22:06:20 UTC

"From a product perspective it was more about creating a new registration process that was easier for new users to understand. I'm sure it's been ages since many of you signed up for an account, but it was quite confusing and included a table of options that was not very inviting to new users.

For new users to the site, the options of either having an ad-supported journal or the option to pay $20 annually for more (2GB) photo storage, more userpics, and ad-controls seems like a much simpler and easy to understand work-flow. We are working hard to add even more features and are currently revisiting our ad-supported strategy to find ways to deliver more user value in a way that isn't crass."

SPIN. Do you really think that new LiveJournal users are that stupid?

I'm sorry, but no.

Re: Basic accounts larkspurlazuli March 25 2008, 02:03:21 UTC

And apparently he thinks Brad is that stupid too.

Re: Basic accounts idonotlikepeas March 13 2008, 00:52:52 UTC

I'm sorry, but this doesn't address two of the main issues at hand.

1) An account creation process containing three options is not dramatically more involved than an account creation process containing two options, so this change offers very little user-facing benefit.
2) This is a sufficiently large change to LiveJournal that it should have been mentioned explicitly in the news post. Attempting to avoid the issue by not discussing it was an extremely poor idea, and I for one would like to hear your justification for that.

Re: Basic accounts intrepia March 13 2008, 00:56:05 UTC

Re: Basic accounts desh March 13 2008, 00:57:35 UTC

What idonotlikepeas said. (As usual.)

Re: Basic accounts jasonshellen March 13 2008, 01:02:22 UTC

Thank you for bringing up these additional points. The reason we did not mention them in the news post was because it doesn't affect users other than new users and News updates are for existing users. We did actually mention:

"Other changes you may have noticed are the logged-out homepage and registration process for new users."

To reiterate, existing Basic accounts are not going away or being changed. The creation of new Basic accounts is what is being stopped. In fact, one of the reasons contributing to going with Plus instead of Basic was that most users coming through the site were opting for Plus anyway. Additionally, what constitutes a Plus and Paid account will change for the better in the near future.

Re: Basic accounts ceilidh March 13 2008, 01:03:49 UTC

most users coming through the site were opting for Plus anyway.

Because Plus is the default.

jeva_chan March 13 2008, 02:43:01 UTC

... what. You're fucking kidding me.

No, wait. I shouldn't be surprised.

Re: Basic accounts dragovianknight March 13 2008, 02:56:28 UTC

BAM. Hit the nail right on the head.

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