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Added to my list of ingenious ideas that no one is making, such as music-playing software that allows me to make playlists via tagging, is:
A fricking LJ killer already.
Seriously, only momentum and the total suck of its competitors is keeping this place going. They have not made a good PR decision in two years or more -- every time I hear about them, my reaction is, What the fuck?
But it keeps on chugging and they never get the message because they keep getting new members. (Well, HAH, now that you can't make basic accounts anymore, that might stop.)
And the reason they keep getting new members -- the reason most people don't really leave, even though the vast majority of its users all hate LJ by now -- is because every alternative to LJ sucks.
( An overview of why every other journal site using LJ's code fails. )
What is so hard about this? Why do none of these sites follow the very basic rules of making websites? I know that it's hard to ramp up the amount of features and bandwidth LJ has, but -- how do you all fail this badly? There are only a few things I demand in my journal website:
--Search function. This is important.
--Not hideous; neat.
--Let me find things; usable.
--No stupid fucking theme. I am a user, not an inmate, and you are a website, not a morgue.
--Give me the ability to pay you to get a fricking ton of userpics.
If you do all of these things, you will have created a simple, professional service that can devour LJ's no-longer-loyal userbase and generate the bucks for you. I pay LJ and I think they're assholes.
The big problem, for me, is that I am extremely reluctant to move because I am in this journal thing for the community, not the exercise in writing. I have an LJ because there are communities for my fandoms and interests where people post routinely and share their thoughts and fanworks and discuss things that are on their mind; from these forums I make friends and create a social network. And so far none of these rival-wannabes have anything like cohesive communities, and so I will never join them.
The key to getting a community is to stop alienating people. Don't isolate your users by not letting them search for other users or communities. Don't be so ugly or unintuitive that no one can look at/bear to use your site. Don't call your users names or insult their intelligence or jeer at them with stupid omnipresent mascots. Let people have a variety of userpics right off the bat and you'll own the RP crowd.
Then people will join your site. And maybe you'll get a community. And maybe I'll join.
I swear, if I had any business sense, I'd make a fortune... A, anyone wanna help?? D:
A fricking LJ killer already.
Seriously, only momentum and the total suck of its competitors is keeping this place going. They have not made a good PR decision in two years or more -- every time I hear about them, my reaction is, What the fuck?
But it keeps on chugging and they never get the message because they keep getting new members. (Well, HAH, now that you can't make basic accounts anymore, that might stop.)
And the reason they keep getting new members -- the reason most people don't really leave, even though the vast majority of its users all hate LJ by now -- is because every alternative to LJ sucks.
( An overview of why every other journal site using LJ's code fails. )
What is so hard about this? Why do none of these sites follow the very basic rules of making websites? I know that it's hard to ramp up the amount of features and bandwidth LJ has, but -- how do you all fail this badly? There are only a few things I demand in my journal website:
--Search function. This is important.
--Not hideous; neat.
--Let me find things; usable.
--No stupid fucking theme. I am a user, not an inmate, and you are a website, not a morgue.
--Give me the ability to pay you to get a fricking ton of userpics.
If you do all of these things, you will have created a simple, professional service that can devour LJ's no-longer-loyal userbase and generate the bucks for you. I pay LJ and I think they're assholes.
The big problem, for me, is that I am extremely reluctant to move because I am in this journal thing for the community, not the exercise in writing. I have an LJ because there are communities for my fandoms and interests where people post routinely and share their thoughts and fanworks and discuss things that are on their mind; from these forums I make friends and create a social network. And so far none of these rival-wannabes have anything like cohesive communities, and so I will never join them.
The key to getting a community is to stop alienating people. Don't isolate your users by not letting them search for other users or communities. Don't be so ugly or unintuitive that no one can look at/bear to use your site. Don't call your users names or insult their intelligence or jeer at them with stupid omnipresent mascots. Let people have a variety of userpics right off the bat and you'll own the RP crowd.
Then people will join your site. And maybe you'll get a community. And maybe I'll join.
I swear, if I had any business sense, I'd make a fortune... A, anyone wanna help?? D: