30June
The headlines
size accounts 13254117 213128 1.63% size accounts_active_1 527792 24944 4.96% size accounts_active_30 1781346 5941 0.33% size accounts_active_7 1104893 3013 0.27% userinfo total 13238056 211297 1.62% userinfo updated 8316484 91691 1.11% userinfo updated_last1 203672 18179 9.80% userinfo updated_last30 1012745 -6814 -0.67% userinfo updated_last7 585239 3486 0.60%
Accounts climbs by 1.6%, Userinfo:updated by 1.1%. Active:30 makes a small climb, but is still lower than April.
Sex
gender F 3664023 69276 1.89% gender M 1793422 35653 1.99% gender U 2125273 18342 0.86%
Total sex declared: 7582718 (+123271, 1.65%) (57% of Accounts, 91% of Updated.) Males are still signing up faster than females, the F/M ratio stands at 2.043 (-0.002).
Age
Here's a list of the ages with at least 100,000 people:
age 15 192137 126 0.07% age 16 355092 -1681 -0.47% age 17 521763 6498 1.25% age 18 606382 10017 1.65% age 19 630673 14108 2.24% age 20 599030 18167 3.03% age 21 542475 14849 2.74% age 22 461759 16347 3.54% age 23 368426 15114 4.10% age 24 305542 10872 3.56% age 25 248365 10420 4.20% age 26 216713 6442 2.97% age 27 196460 11408 5.81% age 28 133590 5845 4.38% age 29 112137 5278 4.71%
Total declaring an age: 6513931 (+193848, 3.07%) (86% of Sex (up 4%), 78% of Updated (up 3%).) Modal age remains 19. Quartiles come at 18.8 (+0.1), 21.4 (nc), 25.7 (+0.1). We're not at all sure what's happening here, especially given the significant losses in all categories last month - we suspect that was caused by a technical fault.
Top 20 Countries
country US 3389459 16125 0.48% country RU 482169 8508 1.76% country CA 288434 1464 0.51% country UK 250976 2122 0.85% country AU 118937 907 0.76% country UA 57588 1300 2.26% country PH 46699 437 0.94% country SG 46020 1219 2.65% country DE 44019 588 1.34% country FI 35060 478 1.36% country JP 29019 403 1.39% country NL 24068 260 1.08% country BY 18978 419 2.21% country IL 18285 207 1.13% country NZ 17332 134 0.77% country BR 16647 285 1.71% country ES 16510 220 1.33% country FR 15895 196 1.23% country SE 11701 123 1.05% country IE 10996 75 0.68%
224 other countries: 266631
Total countries declared: 5205423 (+38197, 0.74%) (80% of those declaring an Age (-4), 69% of Sex (nc), 63% of Active (+1%)).
No change in the order of the top 20, and growth is again almost entirely powered by the Russia-Belarus-Ukraine bloc, and by South East Asia - Malaysia moves into 23rd place and over 10,000 users. The gaps beneath the 20: Ireland's lead over India is 186 (-14), over Italy 330 (-81), over Malaysia 855 (-29).
Signups
For our purposes, the June signup month runs from 30 May to 28 June. Data for the last two days are not available at the time of writing.
For the third month running, more signups this year than last, with 17 days bringing in more customers.
Total signups: 2002 - 32996 2003 - 54996 2004 - 319182 2005 - 314300 2006 - 209086 2007 - 217362
Syndicated feeds
Top 10 Blogthings 32369 -400 Postsecret 27404 508 Word of the Day 16969 59 Gaiman 16232 93 XKCD 11769 988 Astronomy picture 11537 107 Penny Arcade 9466 73 Sinfest 9052 84 Overheardnyc 8448 94 VG Cats 8293 -10
XKCD moves up one place.
Readership of feed ranked: 50 1472 (+2) 100 713 (+8) 200 316 (+4) 500 135 (nc) 1000 60 (nc)
The Zipf distribution allows us to approximate n = (1/k^s)*a
where n = number of readers
k = rank
s = exponent (experimentally, 1.15)
a = scalar multiple (experimentally, 137,200)
This gives an almost identical shape to last month's distribution, where s=1.15 and a=135,700.
We might extend the table:
2500 17 (nc) 5000 8 (nc) 10000 3 (nc) 25000 1 (nc) 50000 1 (nc)
We're still reasonably confident that around 50,000 feeds have at least one reader. It's not known how many feeds are consumed.
These are the statistics. Conclusions, as ever, are yours.
Commentary this month
Barak Berkowitz wrote again regarding proposals to change the company's operations. We were struck, yet again, by the company's sole focus on its local advocacy groups. While we generally support the efforts of the EFF, they are a group operating specifically in the rebel provinces. Creative Commons licenses revolve money and attribution; entirely a North American view of what's important. A CCL doesn't allow one to say, You may reproduce short extracts, properly attributed, in a for-profit publication, but not if the publication is owned by News International or Associated Newspapers. Indeed, it doesn't even touch on the moral rights that are an integral part of copyright in Europe, but generally ignored by the North Americans. It would surely be advantageous for Six Apart to explore other ways of working, and perhaps look to cherry-pick the best bits of many methods.
Mr. Berkowitz also implies that Livejournal is one homogenous community. As anyone who actually uses the site will know, Livejournal is a large and sprawling network of hetrogenous micro-communities. Measures that work on sites where everyone is (essentially) reading the same content tend not to work where there are many disjoint social circles. Rather than emulating Metafilter, they should be looking into the BBC message boards.
In comments, some suggested a constitution, spelling out things that the site's customers could expect from the management. But such a document already exists: it is the Social Contract. Six Apart has attempted to publicly repudiate this contract, and it may not apply to accounts created since their purchase in early 2005, but the Social Contract is a contract. It is an integral part of the terms of service, and simply cannot be broken by one party alone, no matter how inconvenient its terms might be.
Six Apart sold permanent accounts for a week. As was the case in the 2005 sale, the nominal price was USD 150 (€111.71). Adjusted for eurozone inflation and allowing for currency fluctuations, this was a reduction of almost €20.
Early purchasers were invited to select amongst four nominated causes to receive a USD 25 (€18.50) donation. The causes were the EFF, a group of activists working almost exclusively in the rebel provinces; RAINN, a group of sex-abuse activists working exclusively in the rebel provinces; Creative Commons, a group promoting their particular viewpoint on copyright reform from the viewpoint of the rebel provinces; and Witness, a group promoting human rights around the world from a base in the rebel provinces.
Why did Six Apart choose Witness and not the longer-established and more-recognised Amnesty International? It's very simple: All donations to Witness are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Witness supporters are acknowledged in our annual report. (source) The power of good publicity and a tax break. As Amnesty falls under the UK's laws, its political aims mean it is not regarded as a charity, donations cannot be offset against tax, and the organisation chooses not to give publicity to donors.
In the publicity for this cash-grab, CEO Barak Berkowitz wittered on about such meaningless claptrap as creating an economy that encourages sharing, and using technology to improve the world. He was quoted as saying that the company would address some of the concerns expressed by its customers:
- Clarifying our policies so that it's easier to understand what kinds of content Six Apart is either unwilling to host or legally unable to host.
- Building an automated system for reporting offensive and abusive content and a reputation engine that avoids the majority or a vocal minority from constraining open and free expression under the policies in above.
- Clarifying the differences in policies between public and private content, and making commitments about how you can expect us to protect your private content and resist intrusions into your privacy.
- Creating a forum for making all of this more transparent and predictable.
Content that 6A is legally able, but is unwilling, to host? If the company is standing by its published goals to support legitimate content, that would be a distinction without a difference. Building a viable reputation system for distributed content? That would be technologically difficult and the social equivalent of turning base metal into gold. Six Apart adopting a meaningful privacy policy? Pigs will fly before that company abides by the Eight Principles.
And pigs will fly before Warriors [sic] for Innocence get a clue.
Abraham Hassan (who enjoys the support of Six Apart even after he told a customer to go away) put the corporate spin on things. Some sections jump out at us. There were several miscommunications internally regarding the changes we wanted to make in enforcement, and what we enforced prohibited listing any illegal activity as an interest. The Abuse mob managed to get the wrong end of the stick again, almost certainly because they are neither professional in standing nor professional in operation.
Our goal was to make sure that profiles were being held to the same standards as other content. This is no re-assurance; the Tit or No Tit brew-ha-ha a year earlier exposed the lack of common standards. One reasonable interpretation of Mr. Hassan's statement is: the guidance proscribing exposed nipples on default avatars has now been superceded by this admonition to look at the picture, profile, and journal.
CEO Barak "I'm in the money" Berkowitz stated, Our number one goal is to encourage and promote a free and open community. We will only intervene to the extent needed to avoid the site being used as a vehicle for illegal activities. And then promptly contradicted himself, No content that is created to plan, encourage, or advocate hate crimes One person's hate crime is another person's free expression. By setting a standard different from the law of the land, Six Apart opens up a whole new can of worms. Mittelfeld's comment speaks volumes: Go to 20 different countries around the world and ask them what they think a hate crime is, and you'll probably get at least 15 different answers -- each with different degrees of how much planning, encouragement and/or action is actually required before it officially becomes a criminal activity.
We earlier noted the Privacy International report into privacy matters. PI ranks Livejournal as generally privacy aware, the second-highest of six categories, level with the BBC, Wikipedia, and Last FM (prior to its takeover by CBS). We query whether all four of these services are on a par.
