(no subject)
Mar. 16th, 2008 12:30 pmThank you, everyone who responded to my little poll. I must admit, I was a bit surprised by the results - I'd been expecting, you see, to find that a lot of you were Basic account holders, thus proving to me that Basic accounts are useful to me even though I don't have one, because I read so many. Instead...
For your primary LJ account:
Total responses: 56
Paid or permanent: 47 (84% !!!)
Basic: 7 (12.5%)
Plus: 2 (3.6%)
And of those, 36 (64%) have at least one additional account. The vast majority of those secondary accounts (31/36 - 86%) are Basic, with three Plus and two paid/permanent. And that's not taking into account any communities or extra-to-secondary accounts.
Well! I wonder exactly how uncharacteristic my respondents are? If other fans in other fandoms made similar polls, would they show such a strong leaning towards the paid-for? Is it because a lot of my flist have been on LJ for quite a long time? Is it age-related (yes, quite probably, as I don't think I have teenagers on my friends list)? There are all kinds of things that might factor in to this, and in any case, 56 isn't that big a sample, but still. (84%!)
So, with all kinds of provisos about sample size etc, I am pretty sure that—if it's legit to extrapolate from my flist in this way—it means fannish LJ users are *far*, *far* more likely than non-fannish users to have spent money on an LJ account. Look at that 84%! Is it simply because we're the ones who most care about having a truly personalised LJ layout? Because we're the ones who absolutely must have many userpics? I don't know what it is, but we end up being the committed users. We should be the most cherished and sought-after users.
Hmm.
I suspect, though, that SUP (and 6A) probably regard Plus users as the most valuable, because they expect to get more income from advertisers than from users. I wonder if that is true now, and if not, at what point it is expected to become true? In that circumstance, paid and permanent account holders are actually a nuisance, because they remove themselves from the pool of people who can be sold, lucratively, to advertisers.
Which is, it seems to me, a hell of a shame.
Anyway. On a completely different topic, there's this:

Apparently Terry Pratchett just donated half a million pounds to Alzheimer's research (you did know he's got early signs of the disease, yes?), and there is a move afoot for fans to match his donation and take it up to a million. Which seems like a very good move. So, have at it, folks.
For your primary LJ account:
Total responses: 56
Paid or permanent: 47 (84% !!!)
Basic: 7 (12.5%)
Plus: 2 (3.6%)
And of those, 36 (64%) have at least one additional account. The vast majority of those secondary accounts (31/36 - 86%) are Basic, with three Plus and two paid/permanent. And that's not taking into account any communities or extra-to-secondary accounts.
Well! I wonder exactly how uncharacteristic my respondents are? If other fans in other fandoms made similar polls, would they show such a strong leaning towards the paid-for? Is it because a lot of my flist have been on LJ for quite a long time? Is it age-related (yes, quite probably, as I don't think I have teenagers on my friends list)? There are all kinds of things that might factor in to this, and in any case, 56 isn't that big a sample, but still. (84%!)
So, with all kinds of provisos about sample size etc, I am pretty sure that—if it's legit to extrapolate from my flist in this way—it means fannish LJ users are *far*, *far* more likely than non-fannish users to have spent money on an LJ account. Look at that 84%! Is it simply because we're the ones who most care about having a truly personalised LJ layout? Because we're the ones who absolutely must have many userpics? I don't know what it is, but we end up being the committed users. We should be the most cherished and sought-after users.
Hmm.
I suspect, though, that SUP (and 6A) probably regard Plus users as the most valuable, because they expect to get more income from advertisers than from users. I wonder if that is true now, and if not, at what point it is expected to become true? In that circumstance, paid and permanent account holders are actually a nuisance, because they remove themselves from the pool of people who can be sold, lucratively, to advertisers.
Which is, it seems to me, a hell of a shame.
Anyway. On a completely different topic, there's this:

Apparently Terry Pratchett just donated half a million pounds to Alzheimer's research (you did know he's got early signs of the disease, yes?), and there is a move afoot for fans to match his donation and take it up to a million. Which seems like a very good move. So, have at it, folks.