A generalized three things about the internet and a nice DW specific dreamwidth as vindication of a few cherished theories.

Posterous was ninja sold to Twitter early in 2012. That started the countdown to when (not really if) it would be shut down. That day has come: Posterous will turn off on April 30. This quiet ending stands in contrast headier days when Posterous had an import campaign for "dying" platforms...such as Tumblr--but now Tumblr's still around and Posterous is going away. (Of course, Tumblr still needs to figure out how to make money, too.)

The news had the original founders scrambling to finish getting their next project ready--a replacement called Posthaven that pledges to stick around forever. Of course, in order to do so, it's a paid only service.

The latest announcement from IJ indicates that spam is choking the service to death: The issue is we are getting overwhelmed with spam posts and don't have the funds to add the hardware needed to deal with it.

This has been a long running problem. It's easy to see how much of a problem using the stats page: on almost every load, the majority or entirety of recently updated and recently created journals are SEO spam journals. They might have been trying different strategies up until now, but so far none have been all that effective.

However, IJ isn't about to roll over and die: they're working on a strategy to improve the issue. Facebook posts indicate a return to an invite code system, at least for a few months while the problem is cleared up.

As a service, IJ offers more icons for free accounts than either DW or LJ, and it still has comment subject lines, making it attractive for RP communities and journals. Permanent paid accounts with even more icons are routinely available for as little as $30 during sales. It's a bit up in the air whether or not that's the cause of funding troubles: IJ's strong RP-based clientele often create multiple journals for characters and games, so lots of permanent accounts doesn't necessarily mean cutting off all future revenue from a given user. There's also light ads on the site to help out with revenue.

It hasn't been enough to buy enough hardware to withstand the increasing spam onslaught, but that's a fool game: no matter how much hardware you buy, when you get at this point spammers will just use the power to fill your service up with more spam. Hopefully a combination of invite codes and a thorough scrubbing will return IJ to an even keel.

All in all, it's a sobering reminder that effective spam fighting efforts are vital to the health of any user content generating service.

Why I left Google:

As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.” Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room.

Google+: The Charge Of The Like Brigade

Could Google ever have won? I think so. But not by blitz. By envelopment.

Tumblr annouces foray into paid ads (Adage)
Can Tumblr’s David Karp Embrace Ads Without Selling Out? (NYTimes)

Tumblr is a microblogging platform that has had a LOT of VC investor dollars put into it before it had a monetization strategy.

So, maybe you are into Dreamwidth, or maybe you want to be more into Dreamwidth but are having troubles making that happen, or maybe you know somebody who wants to be into Dreamwidth but doesn't know how to get that ball rolling. Being "into" Dreamwidth, in this instance, is defined as having a vested interest in helping Dreamwidth grow and thrive, especially in a way that personally benefits you.

This article is going to give you suggestions on how to be a filthy seditious Dreamwidth supporter (as opposed to just a Dreamwidth user or nonuser, which is a perfectly fine thing to be too!)--and they're just that, suggestions. If you have a reason to not use one, don't use it--it's just a general practice guide! (It uses a lot of points from 101 Ways to Help Dreamwidth Grow, if you are curious.) It assumes that you use Dreamwidth and enjoy it, or are strongly interested in using Dreamwidth. And while volunteering is great, this article isn't about supporting Dreamwidth that way, either. So, with that in mind, let us continue!

( This way to the agenda )