rpanons | All the pretty little anons

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how do web developers manage to make new site layouts that look fucking terrible and buggy to hell, and remove a lot of well-loved features? and worse, how do they stand by their new site when members are understandably pissed about their favorite features being removed?

i have livejournal and last.fm in mind.

Most businesses narrow down the focus of their product to a specific set of people, and they plan and design with those customers in mind. Livejournal was sold to the Russians, who needed a site that was simple and secure, so they cut a lot of features that weren't being used by their intended customer base, and it left those outside that small group going "what the fuuuuck" all the while. But at the end of the day, livejournal didn't want to be a haven for RPers. It wanted to be a haven for Russian writers who opposed their government. That was who they pandered to.

Did it blow up in their faces? Sure. They lost a huge number of paying customers, and they tried to backpedal about a year after the fact, but the damage was done and most users had moved on.

The problem is I think most website changes cause people to bitch - any time Facebook or Twitter change the slightest thing people have a meltdown - but in MOST cases, the changes are for the better and can be learned. You don't see a lot of immediate backpedaling because 1) people will complain about any change, 2) the change probably cost them a significant amount of money and 3) most users don't follow through with "change it back or I'm LEAVING" threats. So you have maybe 1 or 2 months of bitching before the new has become the status quo.

At least, that's my understanding.

Wait, THAT'S what all those "LJ bought by Russia" jokes were referring to? I just thought it was about the Russian spambots that eventually filled the site.

....yeah? sixapart sold off lj to a Russian company, and the moment they did and their business model shifted, the spambots, the DDoS attacks, the shitty security code pushes all ramped up, resulting in the mass exodus that has us playing here today. this was common knowledge, i thought.

Deets on the backpedaling? I didn't think LJ missed us.

They brought a lot of features back or made them opt-in, like comment headers and the default layout. They had several sales for paid accounts, sent out emails about the "changes" (read: changes back) they made, and they have a few new features like Most Visited Posts and other crap. The only time I still use LJ is for ohnotheydidnt which is pretty much the last bastion of English speaking comms on LJ, but about a year after we all dipped out they started changing the main site to appeal back to us. It didn't work and I think they stopped trying?

I don't think we'll ever go back, tho. For all that LJ did pander to their Russian user base, dreamwidth is willing to appeal to just the DWRP player base. We have free comment editing, zero ads, and idk if you have checked out the support posts or news posts, but we and our icon addictions are literally the lifeblood of this site and DW knows it. They also have amazing customer service. I like it here.

free comment editing and no ads were part of dw long before we turned up

The new designer isn't a user and the owners care about only a subset of the users

As a web designer: this. I can't know my clients' user bases and their users don't sign my paychecks. I do what my client wants after giving my professional input for tweaks that'll make my client's vision more realistic and hopefully user-friendly. ...but I can only go by what my client shares with me, so if my client says their user base doesn't use or like x, y, z thing, I kinda have to take their word for it.

TL;DR: Blame the owners of the site, not the designer/developer lol

All the pretty little anons

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