June 15, 2013

• Don’t question their decisions, they just know more than you

  I wasn’t going to do this. I’m not inclined to rant and rave about something that is dying anyway. And if there was a chance of saving Xanga, I figured they deserved a chance to do their best without me making it any harder for them. It was no skin off my back to just shut up and let it turn out however it turned out. 

  But then I read this quote on a certain blog that seems to be the spokesperson for the new Xanga movement:

   

  “TheXangaTeam understands blogging trends I think more than anyone else on Xanga.”

   

  ROFLMAO!!!!

   

  After I pulled myself off the floor from the spurt of uncontrollable convulsing laughter… I started to get angry.

  Really?!? You think THEY know more than ANYONE on Xanga? These people whose site everyone has known has been on downward trajectory for years, whose site is on the brink of collapse, who can barely manage to even communicate with their users during is last days, whose brilliant amazing plan to save Xanga is to have a $48 pay-to-blog site that gives people what they used to get for free and can still get free almost anywhere else with very little added value and no plan for how to attract new users. These people who expect us to pay that kind of money site unseen without a clue as to what we are buying. Yeah, they’re the experts.  

  This kind of unthinking appeal to authority really enrages me. It reminds me of the obamabots and the bush fanatics of days old. What reason do you have to believe the Xanga team is so much smarter than their users? What reason do any of us have to trust them with our money as they invest in a future website? The obvious question comes to mind, if they ran Xanga so brilliantly, if they had such a mastery of blogging trends beyond the comprehension of our puny blogging minds, why are they closing? Why isn’t some company like Yahoo jumping at the chance to buy Xanga?

  There’s such a thing as throwing good money after bad.

  I hope that this quote represents just the beliefs of one particularly ardent fan and not the attitude or belief of the Xanga Team itself. But I fear it might be indicative of a larger cancer within the organization. And if it is, I know why Xanga failed.

  This kind of arrogant self serving BS is what got them killed. A leadership that gives lip service to how important their “users” are while talking down to them, ignoring them, treating them like children, this doesn’t exactly build the kind of loyalty and respect that lasts. If you can’t interact with your community in a way that doesn’t treat them like ignoramuses, how do you expect your community to give back the level of enthusiasm you need for a site to thrive? How do you expect to attract the constant influx of new users you need to survive if your existing users leave the site and talk about how they were disrespected and ignored by a silent management who can’t keep up with the times? No wonder Xanga has become known as a place where people are largely embarrassed that they once blogged on. 

  Users are not incidental. They aren’t just annoyances to be withstood, nor subjects to be controlled, nor cattle to be herded.  The users define the site. Twitter was not a success because a few smart guys came up with the oh so original idea of stringing together 140 characters. Twitter was a success because the users MADE it a success. Countless brilliant ideas were generated IN twitter, by users. A similar story can be told about youtube, about tumblr, about facebook, about any successful platform. The users were respected and catered to and treated like they were worthwhile and important and given what they needed to grow. And more users heard about it. More people came and saw they were joining something special that was worth being a part of. So they stayed. So they told others. So the sites grew.

  A real community isn’t made up of a group of elites looking down from on high upon their puny subjects and pitying them. A true community is one where people listen and respect one another’s ideas and doesn’t assume immediately that they have all the good ideas and everyone else is just a complainer or an unproductive hater. 

  I’m not saying every Xangan was brilliant and knew exactly what they were talking about when they made suggestions as to what Xanga needed or what Xanga team should be doing. I know that. I’m just saying that there is wisdom in the community and it should be given due consideration. I’m saying if a ton of people are saying “this sounds like a bad idea to me” you should take a minute to pause and think about that. Listen first. Truly hear what they are saying. And then try to formulate a response. Try honestly to answer their criticisms. Explain why you think it is a really good idea and do it in a way that doesn’t sound like you are talking down to them. We aren’t stupid. Maybe we have experiences to bring to bear on the problem that you don’t. Maybe just maybe we understand these social blogging platforms that we care deeply about and spend years and years of our life on a little better than you think we do.  Even if you privately think you know better than any of us, anyone with a little bit of common business sense knows that nobody wants to be told that. Nobody likes to be talked down to. Nobody likes the insufferable prick that just keeps saying over and over and over again “just trust me, little one, I know what’s truly best for you”. 

  In the case of Xanga 2.0, if you listen to the critics, I think what you are hearing from a lot of people is quite clear: “I don’t see anything in what you’ve said that is worth it to me to pay $48 a year for.”  That’s a pretty damning complaint when your master plan is to keep your community alive on $48 payments. You’re either going to have to find other people for whom it IS worth $48 a year to pay for what you are offering or you’re going to have to show those people that they really ARE getting value. And vague statements about “the PLUGINS, THE WONDERFUL PLUGINS!”, don’t mean crap to real people who are trying to decide what to do with their blogging right NOW.  Nor is threatening them with the so called future demise of other free blogging platforms going to cut it. That’s the future. The far future. Right NOW tumblr, and wordpress, and blogger still EXIST and seem to be offering people more of what they want than current dying Xanga offers and probably more of what they want then theoretical future pay-to-blog Xanga that we haven’t even seen so much as an image of offers. For free. You’re asking people to go into this sight unseen based on their nostalgic loving feelings of the past Xanga and then getting angry that they aren’t gratefully pulling out their wallets and throwing money your way and going out there evangelizing the hell out of Xanga.  It’s almost like you’re treating Xanga as your own personal cult rather than a blogging community.

  Honestly, what it sounds like to me is that the vast majority of Xangans would rather buy their monthly cup of starbucks than pay for your crappy theoretical blogging platform (I despise that analogy btw, it’s got such an arrogant silicon valley hipster feel. FYI, not all of us buy Starbucks’s crappy expensive coffee).  That your theoretical future Xanga isn’t even worth that much to people is truly a shame.  It means either you’ve done a piss poor job of convincing people of your vision or your vision is simply a load of crap. Pure and simple. 

  But the good news is there’s still hope. People are generous and willing to give people a chance and many people really do have positive memories of Xanga and nobody likes to see a site merely vanish and go away.  Most people are basically charitable. And you aren’t asking for that much money so you don’t really have to convince that many people.

  So get serious about it.

  Treat us like adults. Talk to us. I know you’re busy, but you need to make it clear to the community that you care what happens to Xanga. That you aren’t just sick of it and secretly hoping on the inside that you don’t even make the money so you can let this heartache fade away and never have to deal with this annoying community of stupid internet pricks again. Because that’s what it looks like to us on the outside. We see a leadership that doesn’t give a shit and hasn’t cared and would rather we all just go far far away as soon as possible. So… we’re going away. And very few of us are sticking around to see what happens next.

  Maybe you’ll sucker 700 odd more people into paying $48 to keep your site open. Heck maybe you’ll continue to sucker 1250 people into contributing every year for a while. But even then, that’s not exactly a gargantuan community, and I don’t see it growing much. Not like this. And it won’t be anything like the old Xanga even if it does survive. And if you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll likely run into financial straits again when there’s another unexpected market shock and have a repeat of this a few years down the road anyway.  Why should we bother? Why should we care?  You don’t seem to.

  I’m not speaking as a representative Xangan. To be honest, I’d given up on Xanga long ago and so did most of the people I know and care about. It just wasn’t much fun anymore and even we could see the writing on the wall. But having been away for so long I can’t pretend to speak for people who have stuck with it all the way through.

  But this is what I’m hearing and reading all over the site these days. It’s not hard to see. Everyone I’ve talked to about Xanga is saying some variation of this. Even the people who have paid seem extremely skeptical. The best I hear generally is “well if they don’t make it, and it probably won’t, at least I’m not losing any money”. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.  I haven’t heard anyone talking about how awesome it’s going to be. I haven’t heard anyone talking about how they can’t wait to get a blog on the new Xanga, how they’ve been looking forward to this transition, or how Xanga 2.0 looks so cool. None of that. If it’s out there, I’ve totally missed it. I see attitudes ranging from for the love of God just let Xanga die, to it’s hopeless, to eh, why not contribute? That’s not what you want.  You want a product so good that people are lining up to pay you money. That they can’t wait for. And if you have such a project you sure as heck haven’t communicated that well to people.

  If you don’t. If you continue to think “well gosh we know we’re making great decisions but the people just don’t get it. Oh well what can we do? We were too smart for our community I guess.” Well then the end result is inevitable. We all know how this story ends.

  Xanga is doomed.

  • 9:46 pm
  • 3 Comments