Noël ([info]joyeuxnoel) wrote,
@ 2006-06-19 09:47:00
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Current mood:disheartened
Entry tags:livejournal, rants

Livejournal/Vox/6A
So there's a ton of people signing the Livejournal Petition and honestly, I think it's the wrong way to go about things. But I understand why people want to sign.

Livejournal users are not adverse to change. Instead, we're all paranoid that everything we love will go poof. Yeah, we want the sparkly styles and features that work but your average livejournal user will be happy and sated if you give them 20 more icons. Truth, yo. Honestly, we just want things that will make better. And as for livejournal being marketed to teenagers, if you got Ljseek and look at the tag cloud "work" is much bigger than "school" and hell, "fan fiction" is on there as well. But anyways...

What really disheartens me is Vox:

http://www.vox.com/


Which is Six Apart's new blogging service which is set to launch 2006. Basically, they took all the cool things about livejournal, smushed them with a blog and screwed both their Typepad users and their Livejournal users.

I'll admit. Vox looks sweet. Vox looks like everything livejournal could be. Yeah, the layouts aren't the best but that's only on the surface. From poking around looking at "blog entries" and "neighborhoods" almost every thing has a livejournal parallel. From the recent comment aggregator to splitting your "neighborhood list." Livejournal could very easily get a facelift into Vox. It feels familiar. Hell! Livejournal already does everything Vox does. Vox is Livejournal just with a more standard "blog" look.

Now, I don't know what 6A's marketing plan will be for this. But I'm fairly sure Vox won't be free. Hell, Typepad is one of the more expensive blogs out there. I'm just... disheartened... To me, this is a slap in the face.

Instead of Six Apart telling the world how kick ass Livejournal is, they seem to have said let's take the good parts, let's give it a facelift, and NOW LET'S PROFIT!

Thanks guys. You're really winning fans here.

*sigh*

Hell, look at it this way. The petition might just end up working if 6A spends their development time on Vox (which will make them money) and lets Livejournal linger in the dust. Yeah, I admit I don't want the site to change into something I don't recognize but I don't want it to stagnate either. Pyrrich victory, yo. Pyrrich victory.

[EDIT: Actually, the more I think about it, if Vox doesn't have any support for community management, then Vox is nothing more than a gimped version of livejournal that fails utterly on expanding social networks. Either way, launch'll be interesting. ]

[EDIT 2: Comments screened out of courtesy to give [info]anildash a chance to reply first. ]


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[info]anildash
2006-06-19 10:45 pm UTC (link)
Thanks so much for the really thoughtful response! I honestly try to find places to talk to our community/customers because, well, I *like* doing this stuff. :) Call me crazy.

To be honest, we're deliberately not talking a whole bunch about Vox's business model and even the features because it's still *really* early. We're going to let the community tell us how things should work and when certain parts are done. Basically, it's a case of not wanting to promote somethat that most people can't even see, let alone make use of. If we were talking a lot about it, I'm sure we'd get grief for being a bunch of Web 2.0 hypesters, and that'd be a fair criticism, too. So we chose to get grief for being too closed, and that's a fair point.

FWIW, I was the first employee at Six Apart after the founders, and we've got a pretty huge tradition of talking about things that businesses aren't "supposed" to discuss with the community. From our business model to feedback on things like licensing, we really like having our community do a sanity check for us. Hell, when TypePad had some downtime last year, we let users choose how much they wanted as a refund. Would we rather have not let people down in the first place? Sure. But I hope we get points for trying.

"Nested comments and comment threads are a foreign thing for blogs but vital for a livejournal community."

Oh, I *totally* understand this. Believe me, I've gotten into lots of (kind-hearted) flamewars with the LJ team about this stuff. (There's lots of "Vox is great, but I'm never using it unless it has threaded comments." "Go die!" sorts of discussions.)

Truth is, Vox will never have all the stuff LJ has, probably. Like, LJ has Singles and a To-Do list and god only knows what else. I sure *hope* Vox never has all the features TypePad has. ("I need to customize my feed URLs!") But we will be sharing the best, most useful parts between all three platforms, and Vox is already starting to have its own distinct community.

Truth be told, I think a lot people took the statement of *fact* that LiveJournal is a predominantly young community as something other than what it was. LJ, to me, is more about people who want a community and are very comfortable with the fact that they're not "mainstream". (Whatever that means.) Hell, most of us on LJ are proud of that fact.

Vox is more for people who don't really care about technology, but want to connect with friends and family. My gut tells me that skews older and less techie and probably more mainstream. Is there some overlap? Sure. Does that mean OH NOES EVERYONE PANIC!!!1!

I don't think so. :)

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[info]joyeuxnoel
2006-06-20 12:15 am UTC (link)
I *like* doing this stuff. :) Call me crazy.

Stuff like that doesn't make you crazy at all. It makes you seem down to earth and on the level, and dare I say it, cool. It shows personality (more than your Prince icon) which counts for a long way. So first off, I thank you for your reply.

To be honest, we're deliberately not talking a whole bunch about Vox's business model and even the features because it's still *really* early.

Which is understandable and I'm sure you have projects and other things bopping about which may or may not see fruition. Or like Google, branch out everywhere and waits for the opportune time and place. But like everything on the internet, eventually someone's going to notice and probably not at the best moment.

Hell, when TypePad had some downtime last year, we let users choose how much they wanted as a refund... But I hope we get points for trying

I can respect that because it shows you care about your users. Also, I'm sure everyone on TypePad knew that 6A would do right by them. That you'd get everything fixed and make up for the inconveniences even if they weren't your fault. Honestly, I think the Livejournal community is still trying to build that trust with Six Apart. We're like that stray dog who isn't sure if you're really going to give us those table scraps or not.

Truth is, Vox will never have all the stuff LJ has, probably. Like, LJ has Singles and a To-Do list and god only knows what else. I sure *hope* Vox never has all the features TypePad has.

Again, I really appreciate the time you're taking to explain more about Vox. As a TypePad user, who doesn't want Vox to steal its thunder, I'm sure you can relate to myself, a LJer, who shares the same concern. I'm sure you can understand the intial skepticism especially since you actually have more of a sense of what's going on whereas most people in Livejournal land don't.

I definetly have a better view about Vox and 6A after talking to you. A little discussion can go along way. Which is difficult since the company is only so big. So I appreciate your time again. And I'm sure the rest of the users would benefit from the same knowledge you shared with me here.

Truth be told, I think a lot people took the statement of *fact* that LiveJournal is a predominantly young community as something other than what it was.

I think a lot of people, including myself, keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. We look at how MySpace is making the news left and right. And like any forum, speculation is rampant until there's Official Word. I'm sure things will settle since the new update hit [info]lj_design today. Yeah, the livejournal user base jumps to conclusions but I still think a lot of it could be mitigated if Announcement posts could benefit from a Focus/Sample/Beta Group who know what they're looking at is only a Work in Progress.

No one needed the 2,000+ comments. Not us, not you. Especially if you could somehow get a sampling of 100 or 50 frequent users beforehand. These people would be the ones to turn around and say, "Um, it breaks after 150 users and I know about 30 people who have long HTML in their bios."

Less mass hysteria. Same outcome. Like a public test run. (And I know the dev/changelog communities do that to an extent but obviously that's more of a coding under the hood thing than a public unveiling.) Because isn't this what it's all about? Communication? :) Why not let other livejournalers bridge the gap between 6A and the community at large?

(Whatever that means.)

Psst, that just means we're weird and like to pretend we're Teh Speshul. But hey, we have a goat for a mascot. Clearly we aren't normal to begin with. ;)

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[info]anildash
2006-06-20 12:53 am UTC (link)
"specially if you could somehow get a sampling of 100 or 50 frequent users beforehand. These people would be the ones to turn around and say, "Um, it breaks after 150 users and I know about 30 people who have long HTML in their bios."

Less mass hysteria. Same outcome. Like a public test run."

Heh, we were trying use lj_design as the public test run. Figure if we picked 150 people, we might miss something or those who weren't picked would say "they're playing favorites! it's censorship!" or something. I totally understand what it's like to be on the other side, I'm just also sympathetic to my teammates, who were trying to do the right thing and be open, albeit without communicating about it as well as we should, and got flamed.

We need a big "this is for feedback on works in progresss!" disclaimer on there.

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[info]joyeuxnoel
2006-06-20 12:57 am UTC (link)
We need a big "this is for feedback on works in progresss!" disclaimer on there.

*laugh* You joke but this would probably help tons. Seriously. And you can tack on an "If means If!" just to make sure we get the message. :)

Although, I will say, it would also go a long way to say, "We're aware that This Feature and That Feature are broken at the moment and will be fixed if/when this goes live." Sort of like the "Known Issues" in the support box. It should cut down on the spam/repeat comments too.

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