(no subject)
Jan. 19th, 2006 02:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leticiaLivejournal has just made a change which underscores exactly why the dotcom crash happened.
Geeks don't get marketing.
Livejournal survives through cash from paid accounts and addons. These paid accounts and addons are generally much more expensive than just setting up a cheap website with greymatter or something. However, LJ has all its great community things, so they actually make money.
What LJ has just done is give subdomain urls to everyone. This is a very good thing because it increases security; however, it removes a reason to buy paid accounts. Let's not talk about OMG I'M BEING GYPPED. No one is being gypped. If you have paid for a year of LJ, you still get all the same features you paid for. Let's instead examine motivations to purchase a new account or renew an existing one. One powerful motivation is gone. THe added value from a paid account has decreased, and the price remains the same. This will reduce sales.
But wait! They have added something new! ...Five more voice posts a month.
Okay, raise your hand if you have EVER, EVER, said, "Damn it. I wish I had more voice posts. I've used up all fifteen." Right. Now, while I'm sure there are people on LJ who have said just that, there can't be many of them, percentage-wise. (I have no statistics.)
Voice posts (at least by phone) are prohibitively expensive for international users, or, well, anyone who can't get free long distance some way or another, pretty much. There's not one local number nearer to me than California, for instance. And while you can post by computer, umm, what's the point unless you're posting music samples or something? Adding to the extreme uselessness of this 'enhancement' is the fact that storage capacity (which must contain at least voiceposts, icons, and scrapbook stuff) is not increased.
Meanwhile, those who would buy a paid account just for voice posts may be ecstatic, but the rest of us are doing our cost-benefit comparison. Two major motivations for paid account purchasing - convienence/shorter url, and status symbol - have just removed.
And here's the clincher: They recognized that they need to give some increased value, since the added value for a paid account has decreased, but they didn't recognize a need to meet the motivations of their buyers. And so for those of us for whom phone posts are not a major motivation, the cost-benefit comparison is still not looking too bright and shiny.
And for those for whom the primary motivation was that subdomain, either as a status symbol or for convienence?
They're /so not renewing/. And LJ has made no effort to recapture them; their attempt to add motivation is /not/ at all in line with the motivation they have just removed.
This is really, really bad marketing. This is really, really bad customer relations.
And I think long term, LJ's going to have to find an entirely new feature to placate a segment of their paid users with, because increasing limits on existing ones really won't do it. They have removed a feature from the paid account added value; increasing the existing ones is /not the same/ as replacing that. With one less feature, the paid account appeals to that many less people.
In the geeks' defense, LJ may very well be planning this - but the security fix had to go /now/ and Added Value features have to wait for later.
Geeks don't get marketing.
Livejournal survives through cash from paid accounts and addons. These paid accounts and addons are generally much more expensive than just setting up a cheap website with greymatter or something. However, LJ has all its great community things, so they actually make money.
What LJ has just done is give subdomain urls to everyone. This is a very good thing because it increases security; however, it removes a reason to buy paid accounts. Let's not talk about OMG I'M BEING GYPPED. No one is being gypped. If you have paid for a year of LJ, you still get all the same features you paid for. Let's instead examine motivations to purchase a new account or renew an existing one. One powerful motivation is gone. THe added value from a paid account has decreased, and the price remains the same. This will reduce sales.
But wait! They have added something new! ...Five more voice posts a month.
Okay, raise your hand if you have EVER, EVER, said, "Damn it. I wish I had more voice posts. I've used up all fifteen." Right. Now, while I'm sure there are people on LJ who have said just that, there can't be many of them, percentage-wise. (I have no statistics.)
Voice posts (at least by phone) are prohibitively expensive for international users, or, well, anyone who can't get free long distance some way or another, pretty much. There's not one local number nearer to me than California, for instance. And while you can post by computer, umm, what's the point unless you're posting music samples or something? Adding to the extreme uselessness of this 'enhancement' is the fact that storage capacity (which must contain at least voiceposts, icons, and scrapbook stuff) is not increased.
Meanwhile, those who would buy a paid account just for voice posts may be ecstatic, but the rest of us are doing our cost-benefit comparison. Two major motivations for paid account purchasing - convienence/shorter url, and status symbol - have just removed.
And here's the clincher: They recognized that they need to give some increased value, since the added value for a paid account has decreased, but they didn't recognize a need to meet the motivations of their buyers. And so for those of us for whom phone posts are not a major motivation, the cost-benefit comparison is still not looking too bright and shiny.
And for those for whom the primary motivation was that subdomain, either as a status symbol or for convienence?
They're /so not renewing/. And LJ has made no effort to recapture them; their attempt to add motivation is /not/ at all in line with the motivation they have just removed.
This is really, really bad marketing. This is really, really bad customer relations.
And I think long term, LJ's going to have to find an entirely new feature to placate a segment of their paid users with, because increasing limits on existing ones really won't do it. They have removed a feature from the paid account added value; increasing the existing ones is /not the same/ as replacing that. With one less feature, the paid account appeals to that many less people.
In the geeks' defense, LJ may very well be planning this - but the security fix had to go /now/ and Added Value features have to wait for later.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 03:31 pm (UTC)Definitely a bad move. Maybe they should use their Poll system to find out what users want.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 04:42 pm (UTC)Wow.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:11 pm (UTC)I suspect having a paid account has something to do with my having all that space for pictures on the scrapbook, too, but I really couldn't say. It's all about the icons for me.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:28 pm (UTC)Which is now the official address format for /everyone/, both more and less convenient. Shorter to type, but wreaks havoc with address completion.
(Old URLs will still work, however, but redirect.)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 01:27 am (UTC)But then, a good portion of my friends with paid accounts are in it for the icons and the style layouts anyway. Possibly if they started giving 100 icons away for free I'd let my paid account lapse, but until then, it's not like the paid account members don't still get a whole HOST of nifty things.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 03:07 am (UTC)I mean, hell, most people didn't even mention that paid users got boosted from 50 icons to 100 in August. Which, for me is MORE added value than the URL thing subtracts value. It's totally subjective. (And then there are the permanent account holder who had 100 icons all along, and are no longer OMG special snowflakes themselves...)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 05:38 am (UTC)(For that matter, the subdomain didn't really matter either. I'm ...not entirely sure why I have a paid account. It probably has something to do with cheese. Mmm, cheese.)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 09:46 am (UTC)In that case, they can let their paid account lapse. If the URL was the main reason they got the paid account, then there's not much LJ can give them in recompense anyway. They were paying for the URL, something that now, by necessity, has to be given away. Boohoo, no one knew this was gonna happen. Suck it up and don't renew the paid account.
But, then, I'm really practical about that sort of thing.
(I use the picture space and the icons, with the occasional poll thrown in for good measure.)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 05:46 am (UTC)