drama snarks

[fingertrouble]

I'm thinking of calling shenanigans on those who call 'LJ DRAMA' more often than say, 2-3 months. There should be a law or device to remind those that not every thing requires a cynical snarky 'OH NOES IT'S TEH LJ DRAMA QUEENS!!!'' response - it's actually sometimes as boring and wearing as those when people run around with their head on fire, which does happen, but usually only en masse every 3-6 months.

Could call it the Dalai Drama Rule, like Godwin's rule, to be invoked during undue snarkiness.

Thing is, sometimes the panic is needed to motivate people - you might love to sit their in your smug complacency which is your right, but if you do and LJ does go under, I reserve the right to point and laugh like a little child ;-p

So wait to see if LJ does go under and graciously lets it's expensive servers keep going and gives you plenty of notice while not wanting it's net worth to plummit with advance warning, and having maybe other priorities on it's mind. And I hear the Tooth Fairy, Santa and God have just joined and would like to friend you. Whatever.

Thing is some of us are old hands on the Net - been online since 96 93 and lived and worked during the last crash. Big sites like Boo.com cost 26 Million, lasted 6 months then evaporated. Those in the industry read FuckedCompany (RIP) and giggled nervously in a schadenfreunde gallows-humour way as companies l
went under, while worrying about our own jobs. Sites and companies evaporated and table football stocks went down. Only a few big sites survived, like Lastminute, Yahoo etc. (and LJ but at that point I think it was just Brad Fitz's pet project?) but only just.

Thankfully a lot of the new media companies learned from this and have kept small - whereas the likes of Woolies didn't. So maybe LJ will keep trumbling on, but mark my words: there will be social media and Web 2.0 casualties of this economy. And there won't be warning, it will just evaporate, like in 1999/2000.

So please don't let any important data go with it...call me a panic merchant if you want, snark ahead, but there is real basis in this panic, as all these Web 2.0 sites store your data - would you be able to cope if that site goes overnight?

Comments

[viridescence]

Agreed. I think the people who believe this is simply "LJ DRAMA" either weren't online back then or choose not to remember exactly how it went down. It was ugly.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I've seen enough retail stores and other businesses disappear in an instant, much less web properties. I wont use a web service as my sole backup of anything of value, and I always figure my interaction with a particular site is one step away from going poof one day.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Thing is some of us are old hands on the Net - been online since 96

Ummm, I think to be an "old hand" you need to have been online a little longer than that. Like by about a decade...

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

Actually it's 1993, I forgot University...but hey yeah. But sadly to most people that is old hand :-o

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

You were online in 86? Do tell...

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Actually, I didn't say that I was an old hand myself - I'm not, really - just that the "old hands" I know were generally "online" in some capacity by the late 70s or early 80s, generally through universities.

Aside from early BBS stuff around 79-81 which wasn't actually using IP, I had a bang-path email address and was using newsgroups via terminal sessions starting in '88 or thereabouts. Then I ran B-news and UUCP on a UNIX box starting in about '92, followed by dial-up PPP and finally a DSL connection in the late '90s.

I'd say '95 was the tipping point where most ordinary people could use the Internet without special knowledge or access. Didn't Time Magazine or some such thing declare that the "Year of the Internet"?

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

Well it wasn't til 94 (93?) that the first browsers appeared - I was online via Gopher and Rainbow > Telnet gateways before that in 1993 - we weren't allowed access to anything else at my university til 1995 - no email, browsers, anything. I had to hack my way out, and use borrowed addresses.

But yeah 1995 is when it got attention, although it wasn't til 1996 I had access at home, hence originally saying then.

But 16 years isn't exactly 'fly-by-night' either.

Oh and John was 1983 at Imperial College - which for the UK which was on X-25 was really early, using a TCP/IP EPROM in a BBC Model B and a long wire to one of the mainframes or mini computers (!), he's one of the people that was involved with setting up JANET, the UK academic network.

So I'd say he's truly old skool - but I would say those around pre-Web are 'old skool' and old hands at this.

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

oh and one of the things that prevented the Internet/BBSes etc. getting bigger here is lack of cheap phone lines - no local loop, no free local calls.

It meant my parents refused to get me a modem circa 1983/4 (I'd probably seen War Games or something LOL) - and later in the 80's and early 90s, because the phone calls were prohibitively expensive. If for that and BT's monopoly who knows what might have been. I had access to computers at home from 1981, both my parents were in IT.