![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the rumour
Jan. 5th, 2005 10:18lots of people seem all atwitter about the rumour that "six apart" (the "movable type" company) is buying LJ. and, this being LJ, the drama is already surpassing all sanity.
here's what i think after reading a lot of speculation about how this would affect LJ:
i'll believe it when i hear it from one of the principals.
i think brad's biggest problem doesn't have to do with business, but with people skills, and i don't see how LJ users have suffered from brad's business decisions. on the other hand, six apart just made a really dumb kerfluffle about its license when 3.0 came out, and caused a mass exodus to other weblogs. so how this would automatically be good for LJ's business side, and why the average user would think an improvement would be in zir favour, i don't know.
volunteers versus paid employees doesn't IME say anything about the quality of the work produced, so people who expect that six apart would dismantle the volunteer support system in favour of paid employees are indulging in lots of wishful thinking. six apart relies a heck of a lot on users of their system to help other users, it's simply less formalized than what LJ does. i actually think LJ's support system is quite good in comparison with many others i have seen, and better than quite a few staffed with paid employees.
some people claim MT is better than LJ -- i've used both on my own server, and i wouldn't say that. it's different. the code is horribly clunky in places just like LJ's, and it does a lot less and is slower. (i haven't used 3.0, and i ditched MT for wordpress, so who knows, maybe it's since gotten much better.) i don't think there'd be a wholesale shift to MT anytime soon. in fact, it might go the other way around. one of the best things about LJ, however, is that it's open source, and MT isn't.
"OMG, they're going to remove free accounts!" -- say what? if six apart wants LJ because of its large userbase, it would not make sense to remove free accounts and make the service much more expensive, as i've seen people suggest. that would only cause a mass exodus to DJ or some other site who'd gladly take advantage of millions of people, a small percentage of whom will fork out $2 a month for a pretty decent service.
oh, and we're not talking about a huge conglomerate here; the company started in 2002 and has about 40 employees. i see no reason why they would make the LJ community "go to shit". uh, any more than it already has. if there is even such a thing as one single LJ community -- i don't feel that there is, i think the days of that are long past. and while it may be hard to believe for somebody whose first close online community was LJ, there are lots of great online communities out there just waiting to be found, should this one go totally down the drain.
here's what i think after reading a lot of speculation about how this would affect LJ:
i'll believe it when i hear it from one of the principals.
i think brad's biggest problem doesn't have to do with business, but with people skills, and i don't see how LJ users have suffered from brad's business decisions. on the other hand, six apart just made a really dumb kerfluffle about its license when 3.0 came out, and caused a mass exodus to other weblogs. so how this would automatically be good for LJ's business side, and why the average user would think an improvement would be in zir favour, i don't know.
volunteers versus paid employees doesn't IME say anything about the quality of the work produced, so people who expect that six apart would dismantle the volunteer support system in favour of paid employees are indulging in lots of wishful thinking. six apart relies a heck of a lot on users of their system to help other users, it's simply less formalized than what LJ does. i actually think LJ's support system is quite good in comparison with many others i have seen, and better than quite a few staffed with paid employees.
some people claim MT is better than LJ -- i've used both on my own server, and i wouldn't say that. it's different. the code is horribly clunky in places just like LJ's, and it does a lot less and is slower. (i haven't used 3.0, and i ditched MT for wordpress, so who knows, maybe it's since gotten much better.) i don't think there'd be a wholesale shift to MT anytime soon. in fact, it might go the other way around. one of the best things about LJ, however, is that it's open source, and MT isn't.
"OMG, they're going to remove free accounts!" -- say what? if six apart wants LJ because of its large userbase, it would not make sense to remove free accounts and make the service much more expensive, as i've seen people suggest. that would only cause a mass exodus to DJ or some other site who'd gladly take advantage of millions of people, a small percentage of whom will fork out $2 a month for a pretty decent service.
oh, and we're not talking about a huge conglomerate here; the company started in 2002 and has about 40 employees. i see no reason why they would make the LJ community "go to shit". uh, any more than it already has. if there is even such a thing as one single LJ community -- i don't feel that there is, i think the days of that are long past. and while it may be hard to believe for somebody whose first close online community was LJ, there are lots of great online communities out there just waiting to be found, should this one go totally down the drain.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}