This is really interesting to me. Thank you for translating it.
The extreme disparities in what he's saying make me confused about LJ's intended business model.
First he talks about the difference between the Cyrillic and non-Cyrillic users, and how the American side doesn't care about popularity or whatever, and then he talks about trying to shift the non-Cyrillic side to be like the Cyrillic side by going "away from the service and more towards media." Sites like ONTD are an anomaly, not standard for LJ; what makes him think he can change how 12 million people use LJ? What makes him think we'll pay for advertising our own blogs on the site, when we don't care about popularity that way?
Also, they think they are losing people to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ -- while there was a time people were having exoduses to those places (without any driving action from LJ, even, in the sense that everyone was making accounts on those sites, not "LJ sucks, I'm going to Twitter) I think that time has more or less passed now. Now is a time when their users are migrating to competing journaling websites. What the heck is that about?
And why go to the USA for a month and a half to examine the USian userbase now? Why not do that before overhauling the site?
Also:
These will be fundamental, revolutionary changes from the functional point of view, and from the design point of view LJ will look as though it is 2007-2008 now. [...] The design is an acquired taste."
Not only did they design a website to be "retro" (as they later said) and essentially out of date, but they tried to make is... an acquired taste? The internet is not like wines or foods or whatever. The internet is about functionality and aesthetic pleasure.
no subject
The extreme disparities in what he's saying make me confused about LJ's intended business model.
First he talks about the difference between the Cyrillic and non-Cyrillic users, and how the American side doesn't care about popularity or whatever, and then he talks about trying to shift the non-Cyrillic side to be like the Cyrillic side by going "away from the service and more towards media." Sites like ONTD are an anomaly, not standard for LJ; what makes him think he can change how 12 million people use LJ? What makes him think we'll pay for advertising our own blogs on the site, when we don't care about popularity that way?
Also, they think they are losing people to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ -- while there was a time people were having exoduses to those places (without any driving action from LJ, even, in the sense that everyone was making accounts on those sites, not "LJ sucks, I'm going to Twitter) I think that time has more or less passed now. Now is a time when their users are migrating to competing journaling websites. What the heck is that about?
And why go to the USA for a month and a half to examine the USian userbase now? Why not do that before overhauling the site?
Also:
These will be fundamental, revolutionary changes from the functional point of view, and from the design point of view LJ will look as though it is 2007-2008 now. [...] The design is an acquired taste."
Not only did they design a website to be "retro" (as they later said) and essentially out of date, but they tried to make is... an acquired taste? The internet is not like wines or foods or whatever. The internet is about functionality and aesthetic pleasure.
This does not make sense to me.