The Utility of Archive.org

[heidi]

darkrosetiger has shared a translation of a recent interview of SUP's Anton Nosik (he's the Chief Blogging Officer of SUP) regarding the content strike that's on the table for Friday. You can read another translation here at furiosity's lj.

I'll leave it to each of you as to what you make of things like his statement that nobody he knows will be boycotting on Friday (oh, whatever!) or his belief that you don't walk into a store and ask for free products (er, anyone around here hang out at Lush? What about Costco? Thought so!) and about his business acumen in general.

But I do want to showcase some links to demonstrate that he's not honest speaking accurately when he says:

Then users were told, and I quote, "Even if you pay, you will receive NOTHING extra for it. Your money is a donation. Do you like the project? Donate!" Such a model was in place from 1999 to 2005.

This is what LiveJournal looked like when I started using it back in the fall of 2001. I don't see the word "donate" on there. I don't see any language saying you'd get nothing if you paid for an account. In fact, if you click here, you'll see that you actually did get extra things with your paid account, including:

* LiveJournal.com email address --- all mail to your_username@livejournal.com will be forwarded to your personal email address. You can then choose to show none, either, or both of your email addresses, depending on what you want to expose.

* Personalized domain name --- instead of having your journal at http://www.livejournal.com/users/username/, it'll also be available at http://username.livejournal.com/, much shorter and more personal.

* Fast Server Access --- paid users automatically hit a group of really fast servers when they access any part of the site, instead of the normal servers which we try to keep moderately fast, but not as insanely fast as the paid user servers.

* Customize your journal --- in addition to just being able to pick the style of your journal and the colors, you'll also be able to create your own style using whatever HTML you like. This will also let you be able to make new styles that match your website that you can then easily embed, never revealing that you're using LiveJournal.com as your journal mechanism.

* Text Messaging --- If you have a pager or cellphone, you can get text messages (or numeric messages) right from LiveJournal. You can set it to allow all users, registered users, or only your friends to page you. This is especially useful if you don't want to expose your cell number to everybody, but want to be able to get messages on it. Combined with the "friends only" option, it's just really cool.

* Multiple user pictures --- you're able to upload up to 10 pictures of yourself, and choose which one to use on each entry, in addition to your current mood/music, etc. So, say you're feeling angry: in addition to the angry mood & icon, you can also choose to use your angry picture, which will then show up on everybody's journal that lists you as a friend for that one particular angry entry.

* Automatic Poll/Survey/Booths --- You can quickly and easily make voting polls and full surveys inside your journal entries, embedded right within your text.

Me? When I set up heidi8 a few months later because I wanted to blog personally and not just at fictionalley, I soon paid for a paid account to get more invitations for friends, and for the email account and the extra user pics. I didn't have an angry picture back then, though!

Even if you go back to 1999, there's nothing about donating on the site map about donating, and it isn't on the front page either. Same thing in March of 2000.

Sometime between August and October of 2000, though, paid accounts came onto the scene. But they weren't donations - you definitely were getting something for your money - basically, the same feature-set described above from 2001. (You could pay using a 1-900 number. Awwwwwwww!)

So, Mr Nosik, I'm not seeing where the business model from 1999 through 2005 had anything to do with donations. I really recommend looking through archive.org at LiveJournal Through the Ages, because it's a nifty way to learn about the company you own!

(As an aside, awwwwwwwwwww, look at the adorable Promote LJ banners! So woobie!)

I also highly recommend reading this interview from 2001 with Mr Nosik - don't you think he sounds a little nonplussed when he says:

"I am receiving some pressure from people who would like to manipulate our articles, who are offering money to me or to my journalists to publish something."

Really, I understand that he's frustrated. I understand that he feels under siege by a segment of LJ's users. But being inaccuate in interviews and being presumptive that the site's users are engaging in something other than constructive criticism are not the ways to get out of a siege mentality. Actually talking to your users and seeing them as people who don't like to be manipulated any more than he did back in 2001 might help.