I don't think it will work very well, not unless it's a drawn out thing. As someone pointed out, a single day will be a minor blip. And honestly, A lot of people i know who had basic accounts upgraded to the plus accounts of their own volition because they wanted more icons and more layout options. Not to mention if you get an ad blocker program, the ads aren't that big of an issue.
I think LJ could have done a better job of notifing its customer base, but on the whole, it is a sound business decision. They just need to work on their customer relation skills, and since that is the case, I think the letter writing campaign will work better.
I'm also concerned that a strike on Friday won't be noticed. My flists on Fridays are almost barren, because it's the weekend and people are off doing other things rather than posting online.
(Anyone else notice there's a few people on beckyzoole's flist that are being jerks? Especially considering it's her personal journal, you'd think they'd be less rude about a disagreement of opinions.)
For reasons mentioned above, I also don't think that this is going to affect much. In the end, the percentage of disgruntled LJ users is very small compared to the entire userbase.
That said, it would be interesting if people did start to band together to try and wean ourselves all off of LJ by posting less and less frequently overall, versus a one-day boycott, i.e. if there was some sort of support community (over here?) where we could all announce how proud we were that we didn't post for 5 days in a row, or whatever. I don't know if any of the "leavin lj" style comms are there for that sort of thing (I don't think it's real appropriate for here), but something like that in the long run would be far more effective.
If I remember correctly there was something similar organized during the whole "nipplegate" thing (the breastfeeding default icon issue)and I know I had people on my flist who went as far as deleting their journals for 24 hours...didn't do any good as we all know and LJ just keeps getting worse. I can't see how this would do any good either.
It won't. Especially since a bunch of tossers are trying to organise an anti-protest, where they post as much as possible to counteract any effect of people not posting.
The reality is that the few people who will participate in a strike will not impact LJ at all. It did get me to think about not posting, then I said, why not delete my LJ. So I have. I feel much better now.
And FYI, if you post to LJ using Open ID, a user pic is allowed. Weird.
I think LJ could have done a better job of notifing its customer base, but on the whole, it is a sound business decision. They just need to work on their customer relation skills, and since that is the case, I think the letter writing campaign will work better.
I think they have a bad business model for the kind of platform they are operating--which includes the bad customer relations.
(Anyone else notice there's a few people on beckyzoole's flist that are being jerks? Especially considering it's her personal journal, you'd think they'd be less rude about a disagreement of opinions.)
Some of us have been doing that for how many months now... :p
That said, it would be interesting if people did start to band together to try and wean ourselves all off of LJ by posting less and less frequently overall, versus a one-day boycott, i.e. if there was some sort of support community (over here?) where we could all announce how proud we were that we didn't post for 5 days in a row, or whatever. I don't know if any of the "leavin lj" style comms are there for that sort of thing (I don't think it's real appropriate for here), but something like that in the long run would be far more effective.
It is hard, I've been trying since last summer but I can't seem to fully give up LJ, it seems so quiet over here compared to there.
And FYI, if you post to LJ using Open ID, a user pic is allowed. Weird.