perlmonger: (pete)
perlmonger ([personal profile] perlmonger) wrote2005-01-05 11:38 am
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LJ

I don't (yet) know if the rumour that Brad is going to sell LJ to Six Apart has any truth behind it, but all I can say to danah boyd's posting on the issue is Word.

If it does happen, I suspect that LJ will end up a shell; an expanding enhanced-sharedholder-value shell perhaps (at least for a while), but ultimately a dead thing.

We'll see.
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[identity profile] captainblue.livejournal.com 2005-01-05 11:55 am (UTC)(link)
That would be awful ~:0(

[identity profile] sneerpout.livejournal.com 2005-01-05 11:58 am (UTC)(link)
I will be devastated if LJ ends in its current form. I have no interest in running a bogstandard regular blog that I have no way of moderating access to.

Writing for an audience on a platform accessible to all is something I've been doing all my adult life. It's called journalism and I don't do it for free. My journal is my own space where I can write about anything that pleases me or, more commonly, does not, and I do it for myself and the people I respect, like and trust.

*sigh*

[identity profile] sheepthief.livejournal.com 2005-01-05 12:00 pm (UTC)(link)
No doubt there would be alternatives, possibly based upon the same code, but I suppose not everyone would move to the same one. =:-/

[identity profile] syllopsium.livejournal.com 2005-01-05 12:18 pm (UTC)(link)
mmm... it all depends how much they sell it for, but I'm slightly concerned. Back of envelope musing : currently LJ has a rough income of 2-2.5M$. Since a company is typically sold for say 3x turnover, they need to get back their investment. Within a year that means 440,000 paid accounts (unachievable in a population of under a million regular users) or in three years 147,000 paid users (achievable? theoretically possible, but unlikely).

I wonder what the business case is.. the fundamental problem is that free LJ accounts are too good, but restricting them would cripple the community. LJ as a group isnt a set of people that can be marketed to, either. The technology behind LJ isnt particularly sophisticated, so I dont see any sufficiently valuable IP.

The best option is probably for them to see LJ as a long term project - to add new tags to link movable type and LJ communities and generally leave well alone..
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