![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dreamwidth, in their ongoing attempt to test load-bearing on the servers prior to the launch of open beta on April 30, is releasing more invite codes to create accounts and I have one to give away. Comment if you want it.
I'm moving to Dreamwidth as soon as they're in open beta. I'm not abandoning LJ. I thought I might write a bit about why.
First, let's be realistic: it costs money to run a website. Even if all you're talking about is the servers and bandwidth, that costs money. If you add code development and support, well, there's only so much that can be done as volunteer work. THe larger a service is, the greater the need for regular staff people to handle things. There are two ways for a service like LJ to get money: to charge for its services, or to use advertising. There are two problems with advertising: first, it's kind of hinky for a blog site in that the users of the service are the ones creating the content that brings people to the service and thus makes the advertising pay, but the service is the one that gets the money. Second, since it's the advertisers that are paying the majority of the bills, the service is more likely to listen to them than to the people using the service. LJ tried the suscription route, but couldn't keep a high enough ratio of paid users to users who didn't pay to keep things going, and turned to advertising to close the gap. Dreamwidth is committed to avoiding advertising at all costs, hence the invite codes--they're controlling the ratio of free acounts to the ones that pay the bills and keep DW going. Anyone can create a paid account at any time, but invite codes to create free accounts only go out when they have the paid accounts to support them. When I can afford it (i.e. when I actually have a job and am not living on student loans) I'll be upgrading my account to a paid account because running an ad-free journal/social network/fandom home is important to me, and a service for which I am willing to pay.
Why am I switching to DW and paying them rather than staying on LJ where all my friends are and paying them? Because I don't quite trust LJ. They don't tell the userbase what they're doing and don't tend to understand or care about the subset of the userbase that I am most involved in, and they use advertising and so are less likely to care about me even if I am paying them. DW doesn't have advertisers to please, and they've promised to be transparent in their actions.
Then there's the features. Dreamwidth is not just another clone of LJ. Unlike IJ or GJ, they've spent a lot of time taking the LJ base code and working with it. They're modernizing and streamlining it, redesigning it to be more functional, and adding in features that people on LJ have been asking for for a long time. Including a split between whose stuff you want to read and who you trust to read your private stuff--recognizing that the two are not necessarily the same. So it's got a lot of cool stuff.
But I'm not abandoning LJ. Because I've got friends here and communities here. So what's going to happen once DW is fully up and running (I'm waiting until they get the final bugs out of the importer before using it to import my LJ) is that my LJ will become a backup of my DW--it'll get all the posts, but comments will go on the DW version. I'll still be using my LJ friends page, too. (Eventually the DW team hopes to figure out how to allow you to use your DW reading page to read posts from other services that have been flocked but that you have access to on the other service, and then I'll probably just use the DW reading page exclusively.)
Anyway. That's me and DW, and I've got an invite code for someone else. Who wants it?
ETA: Invitation used!
I'm moving to Dreamwidth as soon as they're in open beta. I'm not abandoning LJ. I thought I might write a bit about why.
First, let's be realistic: it costs money to run a website. Even if all you're talking about is the servers and bandwidth, that costs money. If you add code development and support, well, there's only so much that can be done as volunteer work. THe larger a service is, the greater the need for regular staff people to handle things. There are two ways for a service like LJ to get money: to charge for its services, or to use advertising. There are two problems with advertising: first, it's kind of hinky for a blog site in that the users of the service are the ones creating the content that brings people to the service and thus makes the advertising pay, but the service is the one that gets the money. Second, since it's the advertisers that are paying the majority of the bills, the service is more likely to listen to them than to the people using the service. LJ tried the suscription route, but couldn't keep a high enough ratio of paid users to users who didn't pay to keep things going, and turned to advertising to close the gap. Dreamwidth is committed to avoiding advertising at all costs, hence the invite codes--they're controlling the ratio of free acounts to the ones that pay the bills and keep DW going. Anyone can create a paid account at any time, but invite codes to create free accounts only go out when they have the paid accounts to support them. When I can afford it (i.e. when I actually have a job and am not living on student loans) I'll be upgrading my account to a paid account because running an ad-free journal/social network/fandom home is important to me, and a service for which I am willing to pay.
Why am I switching to DW and paying them rather than staying on LJ where all my friends are and paying them? Because I don't quite trust LJ. They don't tell the userbase what they're doing and don't tend to understand or care about the subset of the userbase that I am most involved in, and they use advertising and so are less likely to care about me even if I am paying them. DW doesn't have advertisers to please, and they've promised to be transparent in their actions.
Then there's the features. Dreamwidth is not just another clone of LJ. Unlike IJ or GJ, they've spent a lot of time taking the LJ base code and working with it. They're modernizing and streamlining it, redesigning it to be more functional, and adding in features that people on LJ have been asking for for a long time. Including a split between whose stuff you want to read and who you trust to read your private stuff--recognizing that the two are not necessarily the same. So it's got a lot of cool stuff.
But I'm not abandoning LJ. Because I've got friends here and communities here. So what's going to happen once DW is fully up and running (I'm waiting until they get the final bugs out of the importer before using it to import my LJ) is that my LJ will become a backup of my DW--it'll get all the posts, but comments will go on the DW version. I'll still be using my LJ friends page, too. (Eventually the DW team hopes to figure out how to allow you to use your DW reading page to read posts from other services that have been flocked but that you have access to on the other service, and then I'll probably just use the DW reading page exclusively.)
Anyway. That's me and DW, and I've got an invite code for someone else. Who wants it?
ETA: Invitation used!
