She’s skeptical about advertising-supported social networking sites, and wrote a multipart essay last year walking through the problems with it (the essay was originally posted to her Live Journal account, but has been moved to Dreamwidth.)

The primary problem she argues, is diminishing returns on ads, resulting in lower prices, and lower prices requiring replacing more editorial content on the page with ads. The reason why there’s a diminishing return for ads on a social networking site: people come there to communicate, not shop. Unless you have the capability (like Facebook) to place a narrowly targeted ad with a high likelihood of getting some sort of conversion into sales or action, then trying to fund your site through ads will not succeed.

That skepticism, and Live Journal’s switch to an advertising-supported model, spurred her to take a branch of the open source Live Journal code, and start Dreamwidth.

Dreamwidth supports itself through a paid accounts system. Users pay as little as USD5 a month up to USD50 a year.

Disclaimer: I am a charter subscriber to Dreamwidth with a lifetime account. If you’d like to try it, please comment on this post. I have a small number of free invite accounts I can share.

kate_nepveu

As read, the panel description sounds rather wank-tastic, however, given the background of my co-panelists, I'm sure we can discuss more interesting things:

1. The development of 'BitterCon' and other meta-convention activities.
2. The role of LJ in programming (thinking of ktempest and coffeeandink's sprints to develop program proposals from a PoC perspective.)
3. LJ as ad-hoc programming space for continued discussion of items (such as "But the Master has a Black and Decker drill.")
4. LJ as immune system (responding to the OSBP, and organizing people on the ground to handle harassing situations.)
5. LJ as pre-convention coordination (are you going, I need a room, I can share a ride, what panels are you on, what panels are you going to, and what the hell is with that panel?)
6. LJ as permanent floating WisCon.

I didn't write the program item description (if you did, please clarify your intent in the comments.)