FandomSecrets moving to DW

[youronewish]

Yet more unwelcome changes to LJ's commenting system, which has resulted in FandomSecrets moving to DW.

As with the previous unwanted, largely protested change, it doesn't appear to be affecting custom S2 comment pages. But unfortunately for communities, S2 comment pages have proven to be detrimental for many of them, and workarounds are getting more and more ridiculous and painful for moderators. And now this latest change is all but forcing communities to either change over to a comment system that still hasn't shaken off its beta bugs but doesn't take several minutes to load -- if loads at all -- or put up with it if they want to remain on LJ.

Did LJ's developers fail to predict that this particular change would be the final straw, or they were hoping for that reaction? As technophile pointed out, LJ has been outright hostile to fandom for not months, but years. It might very well be that the only communities that are desired by LJ's owners are non-fandom ones like ontd. Truthfully, I don't believe it's a deliberate push, merely a serendipitous outcome for them in their self-image, if not their ledgers.

In any case, with FS moving, will this be the necessary push to start fandom moving off LJ?

Comments

[vickyblueeyez]

I've been holding up "the end is near" signs ever since the LJ DDoS attacks. I love that site for the activity. I like this one more for so many reasons but keep going to LJ because it's more active.

[youronewish]

Fandom generally does not like moving once it's established itself somewhere. That's generally true for everyone, but fandom in particular is especially sedentary. I wasn't sure things would move, even when everything started to really go downhill just before SixApart's sale of LJ to SUP.

I will say this much for SA: they saw the value in the userbase rather than the service itself, so at least they had more of a clue than SUP does.

[automaticdoor]

I hope fandom moves! I refuse to post to LJ and I've not cross-posted for six months now (not since 88), but I just can't delete my account because too many friends/fandom things are still there. I use it to read and comment only, with an *occasional* post on a community.

[youronewish]

I certainly hope so. I was extremely happy when LJ's RP community made the switch, but RP itself is a niche within a niche and is only a small part of fandom. So I knew that wasn't going to be enough. It'll take the migration of at least one major community, and FS might just be it. Usually everyone waits for someone else to start the ball rolling, so this could be the necessary nudge in that direction.

[automaticdoor]

My fingers are certainly crossed.

[alchemy]

I honestly think fandom is already slowly moving. FS making the leap is a BIG help, though.

And wasn't there an article somewhere where one of the guys in charge of LJ essentially said they don't care about retaining the old userbase? I seem to remember that.

[dantesspirit]

And wasn't there an article somewhere where one of the guys in charge of LJ essentially said they don't care about retaining the old userbase? I seem to remember that.

Yes, that was when the new comments changes first came about, when the major DDoS attacks first started and people were really complaining.

[youronewish]

You remember correctly, it was this post, linking to a Fast Company article which said in so many words, "Never mind about their pre-existing users, they're aiming to grab completely new users from other pre-existing social media sites and this is a good thing". (Fast Company has been called out before on hyping products and services they've financially invested in, so I'm not taking their article very seriously, but it does provide some insight into SUP's intentions for LJ)

Funny enough, one of the comments on that article was from a marketing specialist who pointed out that they didn't quite think their cunning plan all the way through.

[majorshipper]

I think fandom is moving, slowly but surely. It would really help if something like ONTD moved, but that's never gonna happen. Either way, I do see F!S's move as something of an indicator, and it WILL bring new users to DW. Which is awesome. But IDK if it's the push. I think it's just one in a long line of nudges that bring fandom here, to DW.

[youronewish]

ONTD is one of the communities SUP seems to actually care about, and not just for the ad revenue. It's seen (at least by SUP) as a trendy, hip community that isn't attached to fandom per se. I think SUP is attempting to reinvent LJ as a trendy hipster site, at least as far as their users outside Russia are concerned. Unlike fandom, ONTD doesn't hurt the new image they want to project, so while they aren't actively chasing fandom away, they'll never bend over backwards the same way for a community dedicated to a single fandom. (Except for Twilight, possibly. I don't think even a juggernaut like Supernatural would have the same pull)

However, fandom in general moving over will still hurt LJ in the long run. Doubly so if SUP's hopes to reinvent LJ into a trendy social media site pan out about as well as I expect they will. (i.e., end up turning LJ into Friendster rather than a Facebook for hipsters)

[majorshipper]

You're totally right, which is why I said ONTD would never move. I'm really involved in SPN fandom and I know we have zero pull with LJ. I want to move my little corner of fandom over to LJ, but we already had to move once, and it cut our numbers in half, so we really can't afford to move to DW. Yet.

I'm pretty sure this "reinvention" of LJ is gonna fail. They're driving away their good userbase and they're not gonna get more if they try to compete with those other massive social networking platforms.

[dantesspirit]

Social Capital? Really, LJ, eally?

How... cliqueish and popularity contest-ish.

[youronewish]

It definitely reaffirms my suspicions that SUP is attempting to reinvent LJ as a "Facebook for hipsters". This can only end in LJ turning into Friendster, instead.

[dantesspirit]

Yeah, cause Friendster did so well and Facebook's IPO is doing so well.

/sarcasm.

}:)

[foxfirefey]

To be honest, I don't mind the Social Capital bit in theory (though haven't seen it much in practice)--it might be useful for screening spammers and bots out of moderated membership communities.

[beatrice_otter]

A lot of fandom is already here, but it would be awesome to get more of it here! DW is superior in every way I can think of, comparing platform-to-platform. If LJ keeps being idiots, it speeds up the process of the rest of fandom figuring it out.

[youronewish]

It can go either way. The smaller fandoms I was involved in on LJ seemed to stick around only out of inertia, and probably haven't been largely affected by the recent changes.

But if my suspicions are correct and SUP kicks their reinvention of LJ into a "FaceBook for hipsters", things are going to get to the point where SUP might actually start actively attempting to chase off communities which aren't "trendy and hip". If/when that happens, fandom won't have any choice except to move, whether their friends are still glued to LJ or not. It'll become a strictly blogging site again, but since most users really don't blog all that much (in favour of microblogging via Twitter, FB, or in the case of fandom, Plurk) it's a losing proposition for LJ.

[rainne]

In any case, with FS moving, will this be the necessary push to start fandom moving off LJ?

God, I hope so.

[arethinn]

In any case, with FS moving, will this be the necessary push to start fandom moving off LJ?

Not by itself, I don't think, but hopefully it's part of a growing trend.

[diet_poison]

Hey, this is a random and stupid question? but I was looking at tags/entries to this comm to see if someone might be able to help me figure out how to do this and I notice you did it in this entry. (I also looked at the HTML info under the FAQ)

Do you know what to do with HTML when tagging names of users and comms from LJ while on DW? I'm trying to credit my icons and all of them (currently, since I'm pretty new!) are icons I found on LJ and I want to credit the individuals/comms there who made/featured them. However, when I used the user and comm tags, DW reformatted the text to refer to DW users and comms, many of which (obviously) don't even exist for those same names.

Hope this makes sense xD;;

Sorry for the random OT comment.

But, to add something to the probably now dead discussion...I am one of the users who migrated over here because of f!s making the move! And so far I really like it here, so I'm excited to see what comes next~

[diet_poison]

I typed < user > and < comm > without spaces and I guess it formatted that too. u_u and I'm not used to not being able to edit comments...damn

[youronewish]

No problem! The tag looks like <user name="username" site="livejournal.com">. There's a few other sites besides LJ you can do it with as well, like if you want to credit someone on DA, substitute "deviantart.com" for "livejournal.com". Hope that helps!

[diet_poison]

Yes! It helps a lot! tysm