(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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 04:42 pm (UTC)Wow.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:26 pm (UTC)