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So, anyone have any thoughts on the effectiveness of the strike?
The fact that some of the missing keywords were reinstated (within hours, I believe, of the strike's beginning) seems like a good sign. Whether you count that as a result of the strike or not, it's a step forwards, in any case.
Meantime, Alexa today came out with LJ traffic stats for the strike day. (Their stat reporting lags a few days behind, presumably for data processing.) If you look today, March 21 is the latest day shown.
Playing around a bit with the different categories and timespans, what I can make out is that Reach (number of unique visitors) was up slightly for the day, but that page Rank (comparison to other sites) continued its downward trend with what might be something of a nose dive, and the total number of page views took a small but noticeable dip.
Now, this is just a sampling (their statistics come from tracking users who voluntarily installed their toolbar), but it's interesting. I'm not sure, BTW, what time period they're using. You can only view stats day by day, so if people came rushing back after midnight GMT (the official end of the strike) but before midnight or whatever in Alexa's time zone, that would affect the stats for the day.
What it tells me, though, is that a few more people came than usual, but that they spent noticeably less time at the site, looked at fewer pages in the domain. And the dip in Rank (comparison of traffic to general traffic that day) means that the dip in page views can't be solely attributed to the holiday weekend.
It'll be interesting to come back tomorrow and see what happened with the predicted post-strike bounce-back (where all the strikers came running back to see what happened).
ETA: Traffic details for the 22nd are up. Reach (unique visitors) is up slightly. Rank dropped even further. Page views went back up. Not really sure what to make of that. I guess people came back, started looking and talking, but more people busied themselves elsewhere. Or maybe they went to LJ and then spent the rest of the day surfing around on other sites.
While I'm on the subject of the strike, I have to address the accusations that strikers aren't appreciating the wonder that is LJ. To me, it sounds an awful lot like the people who see liberals complaining about the direction the US has taken and accuse them of being unpatriotic. You see something you love going down a path you don't like, and rather than blindly supporting the whole thing or just clinging to the good parts, you take a stand to fix things. To take what you love and make it better (or at least keep it from getting worse). That, to me, is true patriotism.
Now, I'm not trying to equate love of country with love of LJ, but I am trying to apply the same general concepts to both communities.
And to those who say that SUP should have a clean slate... They knew what they were getting into. They realized there were trust and management issues. They acquired those with the rest of the package. And, too, they specifically kept existing management in place:
The people who made the decisions, the people who made Strikethrough and everything since happen, are still there making the decisions today, even if the signature on the paychecks has changed.
Of course, they also put an "advisory board" into place and created the lj_policy and lj_2008 communities. Good steps. Steps which show that, on some level, they understand the existing problems. And at least some of the blocked interests have been restored. Also, as mentioned, a good step. We need to see more of that. We need to see the board and the communities become effective tools to bring user input into the decision-making process. LJ can be a business, but, as a business, it needs to listen to and respect its userbase. Good customer service is just plain good business.
The fact that some of the missing keywords were reinstated (within hours, I believe, of the strike's beginning) seems like a good sign. Whether you count that as a result of the strike or not, it's a step forwards, in any case.
Meantime, Alexa today came out with LJ traffic stats for the strike day. (Their stat reporting lags a few days behind, presumably for data processing.) If you look today, March 21 is the latest day shown.
Playing around a bit with the different categories and timespans, what I can make out is that Reach (number of unique visitors) was up slightly for the day, but that page Rank (comparison to other sites) continued its downward trend with what might be something of a nose dive, and the total number of page views took a small but noticeable dip.
Now, this is just a sampling (their statistics come from tracking users who voluntarily installed their toolbar), but it's interesting. I'm not sure, BTW, what time period they're using. You can only view stats day by day, so if people came rushing back after midnight GMT (the official end of the strike) but before midnight or whatever in Alexa's time zone, that would affect the stats for the day.
What it tells me, though, is that a few more people came than usual, but that they spent noticeably less time at the site, looked at fewer pages in the domain. And the dip in Rank (comparison of traffic to general traffic that day) means that the dip in page views can't be solely attributed to the holiday weekend.
It'll be interesting to come back tomorrow and see what happened with the predicted post-strike bounce-back (where all the strikers came running back to see what happened).
ETA: Traffic details for the 22nd are up. Reach (unique visitors) is up slightly. Rank dropped even further. Page views went back up. Not really sure what to make of that. I guess people came back, started looking and talking, but more people busied themselves elsewhere. Or maybe they went to LJ and then spent the rest of the day surfing around on other sites.
While I'm on the subject of the strike, I have to address the accusations that strikers aren't appreciating the wonder that is LJ. To me, it sounds an awful lot like the people who see liberals complaining about the direction the US has taken and accuse them of being unpatriotic. You see something you love going down a path you don't like, and rather than blindly supporting the whole thing or just clinging to the good parts, you take a stand to fix things. To take what you love and make it better (or at least keep it from getting worse). That, to me, is true patriotism.
Now, I'm not trying to equate love of country with love of LJ, but I am trying to apply the same general concepts to both communities.
And to those who say that SUP should have a clean slate... They knew what they were getting into. They realized there were trust and management issues. They acquired those with the rest of the package. And, too, they specifically kept existing management in place:
We're also very happy to report that the Six Apart employees who worked exclusively on LiveJournal have all been transferred to LiveJournal, Inc.
The people who made the decisions, the people who made Strikethrough and everything since happen, are still there making the decisions today, even if the signature on the paychecks has changed.
Of course, they also put an "advisory board" into place and created the lj_policy and lj_2008 communities. Good steps. Steps which show that, on some level, they understand the existing problems. And at least some of the blocked interests have been restored. Also, as mentioned, a good step. We need to see more of that. We need to see the board and the communities become effective tools to bring user input into the decision-making process. LJ can be a business, but, as a business, it needs to listen to and respect its userbase. Good customer service is just plain good business.