The Snow In The Summer or So-So
Six Apart Is Rubbish
30April
Though slightly slower than recently, it's hard to argue that the trend of 1.8% growth per month isn't continuing. The active:30 figure is virtually unchanged, following a 2.4% drop the previous month. Males are still signing up faster than females, Livejournal is gaining older users faster than younger ones, the Anglophone countries and the Netherlands are particularly sluggish.
24April
Staff member Denise Paolucci asks after the purpose of the unofficial resistance community, 
no_lj_ads. Here's our response to her points.
What's the point of posting these "ha ha look at how much these ads suck" type posts?
Is the damage to the company's reputation worth more than the loss of income from a small number of commercials? The Social Contract between Livejournal and its users states quite clearly that there shall be no commercials. So far as this interested outsider can tell, the ultimate goal of no_lj_ads remains for advertising to be shown precisely to those users who have specifically chosen to see advertising. Not to people who are just browsing, and not to people who do not pay the fee to see the site without commercials.
(In which we discuss Miss Paolucci's points further, and reach a conclusion that surprised even us. - 1110 words)
31March
The bottom line: fewer people are reading, and the only significant expansion comes in the Urals and Singapore. (All the details and some commentary.)
28February
The bottom line: LJ continues to get older, and the Ukraine-Russia-Belarus axis continues to grow five times faster than the traditional heartland. (All the details)
31January
The end of another month means another installment in the ongoing saga of Livejournal's continued slow-motion collapse. Or should that read, Livejournal's continued conversion from a site for North American teens to one for Cyrillic-writing twentysomethings. The details are inside, plus a review of Mena Trott's appearance on Radio 3.
12January
It's just about a month since Azure Lunatic proposed a vote of thanks to the Livejournal developers. Bizarre as it might seem, I wish to associate myself with this sentiment. The developers, by and large, do a good job; they are assigned a problem, they fix it, and the problem remains fixed. There is no point criticising the monkey if the problem lies with the organ grinder.
The problem remains that Six Apart's management, which purchased Livejournal two years ago, is still incapable of running a bath. It is difficult to come up with a single management decision they've taken over the past two years that I can whole-heartily agree with.
The earthquake that will devastate St. Francisville is going to be a tragedy. It will be made worse by a series of small but predictable and preventable mistakes. Moving the entire operation to sit directly on top of that major geological fault, and eschewing a geographically-redundant architecture, is the work of a mad company. This should have been a no-brainer - an opportunity to have the same content on two physical sites, so that if one goes down, the other continues. It is utter insanity not to take that opportunity.
Honouring promises, that should also be a no-brainer. Almost a year before she started calling people fecking arseholes, Mena Trott promised that there would be no commercials on Livejournal. Her promise was rendered false within fifteen months. Should we treat Mrs. Trott as a person who will say precisely what she thinks the crowd wants to hear, whether or not it's the truth? Talk is cheap, but Six Apart's morals are cheaper.
Other foolish ideas have cascaded from Six Apart's management - the ability to throw steaming piles of horse manure on people's pages, an idiot bar that can be forced on but not forced off, a completely counter-intuitive method of altering personal information. These can, perhaps, be excused as failures of tactics. Six Apart's ability to take completely wrong-headed decisions, and its failure to honour the spirit of its promises, never mind the letter of its promises, is a wrong-headed and offensive strategy.
Azure Lunatic concludes by asking, If you do not trust the people running LJ, what can they reasonably do to demonstrate that they're worthy of your trust?
Meeting the five tests would be great, and I idly notice that none has been passed; all of these are as much cultural and development targets. Meeting the zeroth test - that of being a half-way decent blogging platform - is a necessary condition of my trust.
Here's one way that they could pick themselves out of the mire. Back in March last year, I wrote an email asking Six Apart how they would guarantee that advertisers could not use a combination of age, interests, and location to identify an individual user. Over the next six months, I sent the same message on three subsequent occasions. I have never had the courtesy of an acknowledgement, still less a substantive reply. I know that the question has been read by senior people (plural) at Six Apart, yet answer comes there none. It's only now that Truth and Honesty in Advertising has spotted that the URL to call adverts contains all sorts of personal details. I have no evidence that information contained in this internal URL is passed to advertisers, but I have no evidence that it is not.
Ultimately, Azure L's question boils down to this: Why should I trust a bunch of people who say one thing, then go off and do another? Six Apart's untrustworthiness has cost them USD 70 (€55) in cash terms, and a tremendous amount in goodwill.
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