Mr. Nossik's interview
Mar. 19th, 2008 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dimrubApparently, the English speaking users have stumbled by now across the
now infamous interview given by Mr. Nossik (the Russian text is
available here).
Seeing them trying to battle through the automatic translation, in
order to understand what does the only SUP executive who cares to speak
out, has to say about the Basic accounts cancellation and the ensuing
reaction by the LJ public, I decided to try and whip out a translation
of sorts. Here it is.
now infamous interview given by Mr. Nossik (the Russian text is
available here).
Seeing them trying to battle through the automatic translation, in
order to understand what does the only SUP executive who cares to speak
out, has to say about the Basic accounts cancellation and the ensuing
reaction by the LJ public, I decided to try and whip out a translation
of sorts. Here it is.
- The LJ users, annoyed by the cancellation of the basic accounts,
call for a boycott of your service. How massive can such a boycott
become?
- I am not aware of any LJ user of any interest to me, either among my
"friends" or among the usual commenters of my lj, who is going to join in [the
strike]. In general, I am not aware of anyone who takes this all seriously.
Thus, I have reasons to think this is all a marginal thing, similarly
to previous such attempts. Such as calling all the sponsors of LJ and
asking them to remove their ads from LJ.
- And did they do such calls?
- Ofcourse, not. Where would they find an idiot who would call into a
serious company? It's one thing to call a newspaper in hopes of easy publicity, it's another to call a company... They will be
asking questions: "Who are you? Why should we listen to you?"
- So, you think the boycott will not work?
- No, I didn't say that. Anyone can create several hundreds of fake users,
and write in their Ljs: "on March 21st I will be silent in protest".
Then you, the journalists, will be able to list the names of several
hundreds users, that were silent on that day. And say: "it's just the
tip of the iceberg".
- Do you think LJ users have nothing to fret about?
- Let's figure out first, what is a basic account. Once this account was
the major form of offering available at LJ. Due to the poverty of the
founders, lack of funds for development. And just because LJ was not a
business - it was a students' project. The users then were told
directly: even if you pay, you don't get anything in addition to the
basic stuff. The payment for LJ is a donation. You like it? Donate to
it. This model worked from 1999 up to 2005. The basic account is the
heritage of that model and of the mentality that comes with it,
including the idea of banners being evil.
Since then, something
happened - both to LJ and to the bearers of that mentality. Compared to
the functionality of the improved account [it is not clear to which of
the two he refers here], the functionality of the basic account circa
1999 is rather anachronistic [he uses a word that puts the basic
accounts back to the caves - together with cave men]. I don't think we
should propose this anachronism to the new users. It's like, well, the
cell phones of the 90's.
- But surely there are people, who don't need smartphones, they only
need the simplest possible cheapest cell phone... Suppose, I want to
open a blog in LJ, but I hate ads and I can't afford a paid account.
Can I do that?
- Right now you can't have it in LJ. Neither
could you have it on mail.ru, on google or on yahoo. There is no
service in the world, that, while not being a charity, will not be
making money - either in the form of user's fees, or in the form of ads
revenue. This is normal: you don't come to a store asking for free
merchandise.
- So, LJ is the last place on earth, that gave up on charity?
- Actually, the ones who gave up on charity in the form of basic
accounts, is not LJ, but rather its users. For the last two years only
about 10% of the news users register a new account. And in addition, a supple part of these new accounts
are all kinds of fake accounts, created by the already existent users
in order to send spam, to trick the Yandex search engine, to leave
comments for which the user is likely to be banned...
In short, there's no real
demand for basic accounts, this merchandise won't sell, and it was
removed from the shelf. While at that, the current users of plus
accounts are still allowed to convert them into the basic ones (if they
suddenly loose their mind and decide to migrate from a Mercedes to a
Zaporozhets [a brand of Soviet car]).
- So, why not leave an option to loose their mind to the new users as well?
- I think, we should leave them this option, even though during the time
that passed since this change, not a single person declared that his
own right for a basic account has been compromised. Still, I don't
think the users, who came to LJ after March 12, shouldn't be able to
convert their plus accounts into the basic ones. I hope, we will make
the appropriate amendments. However, it is not my decision to make, but
rather that of the company's whole management.
- When can such a decision be made?
- Here's a catch. In the situation in which the company is being blackmailed our hands are tied.
- Why?
- Suppose, I politely tell you, a journalist, that you put a certain coma
in a wrong place. Your natural response is: "yes, indeed" or "let's ask
the editor". But if I tell you "remove that coma, or I'll blow your
face", will you correct your punctuation?
In a situation, where we
are being blackmailed and threats are being made that our business will
be destroyed, there are business related reasons not to reward such a
behavior. It's not just the psychology of a person, who becomes the
more stubborn the more pressure is being made on him. The thing is that
there was never an endeavor, that succeeded by succumbing to a hostile
will. No decision - even the most righteous one - should be made under
pressure.
It seems right to rethink this decision about March 12
in the near days. However, from the point of view of corporate
politics, we will have to wait till the boycott is over. Let it pass.
So that the topic of people's wrath, threats and pressuring is closed.
Then we will discuss the core issue.
By the way, this is not the first time LJ is threatened with boycott for the last few years.
- How effective are those threats?
- They're so effective, that
during the first year of our cooperation with LJ (from October 2006 to
the end of 2007) the size of its audience (which was being cajoled into
leaving LJ, because it's ruled by Kremlin and the KGB) grew twofold,
from 700,000 to almost 1,500,000.
In general, the LJ audience
can be divided into three groups. There is the silent majority, that
uses LJ for its personal needs and couldn't care less about who, where,
using which funds and for what reason created, develops and supports
this service. There is the "positive minority" (in the Russian speaking
community - about 7-10%). These people like LJ, they find it beneficial
for themselves and they wish it to develop. They help us, among other
things - by providing constructive criticism, thanks to which, by the
way, we fix our mistakes. And there is the third group. They
constantly, throughout the history of LJ's existence, come up with
noisy initiatives, the whole goal of which - to harm LJ, its creators,
to bankrupt, to sue, to harm the reputation. Mostly, these people are
driven by the need to attract attention at themselves. And they succeed
at it every time.
Their rhetorics are practically the same -
regardless of whether the person writes in English while in California,
or in Russian while in Moscow. These people at certain times demanded
that Brad Fitzpatrick retires, when he rules LJ single-handedly. They
demanded that every sponsor is contacted and threatened him with court
and reputation damage, if he doesn't stop posting ads in LJ. They
demanded to cancel every single new feature in LJ. They cajoled the
users to leave for the sake of another service for this reason or
another.
It is understood, that journalists need scoops. A
scandal in LJ is a scoop. But nobody will write about all the fixes we
made in LJ's code, about how much we improved it, how many efforts went
into correcting the bugs, into introduction of new features - nobody
cares to write about all that.
The administration went back or
corrected on its decisions, published apologies, reinstated accounts,
that were mistakenly blocked, added new clauses into the TOS...
Everything can be reformed in LJ through a constructive dialog.
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Re: Ну вот Фродо не понравилась "истерия"
on 2008-03-19 10:06 pm (UTC)Мне просто интересно
on 2008-03-19 10:24 pm (UTC)Re: Мне просто интересно
on 2008-03-19 10:28 pm (UTC)Это как раз про Деда Мороза
on 2008-03-19 10:36 pm (UTC)Re: Это как раз про Деда Мороза
on 2008-03-19 10:57 pm (UTC)Только на платниках - 2.3 миллиона в год.
Вполне хватает на содержание серверов, зарплаты программеров, и еще на хлеб с маслом остается. Если не снимать офис в Смоленском пассаже.
Можно было это неееежненько расширять.
Re: Это как раз про Деда Мороза
on 2008-03-20 05:35 am (UTC)станет невозможно находиться
on 2008-03-20 07:43 am (UTC)ПС: был кстати случай, когда одному человеку отлилось, что суп сливает айпи-адреса советской прокуратуре, но этого НИКТО не заметил. Наверняка ты даже не слышал об этом.
Re: станет невозможно находиться
on 2008-03-20 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-03-20 08:35 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-03-20 08:38 am (UTC)Все просто: число людей, активно пишущих в ЖЖ, непрерывно падает. Чем больше СУП будет хамить, тем больше народу махнет рукой, и уйдет, тем быстрее ЖЖ начнет опустошаться.
> А что бы ты сделал кстати, чисто технически?
Ха, да мало ли что можно сделать! Например, ограничить кол-во сообществ, в которые новый пользователь может вступать. Отслеживать массовые кросспосты. Да кучу чего можно сделать.