Thanks so much for this, Fey, I really appreciate how on the ball you are about these issues. I do take the point that DW doesn't have VC to worry about; that's in fact one of the reasons why I cast my lot in with DW in the first place. I really liked the idea that they weren't trying to make megabucks, but just enough to keep the site going and pay a few employees. The trouble is that at the moment it sounds like they're not even managing to break even, even with their relatively small scale ambitions, and that worries me.
And ok, sure, you can point to other sites that lose money, but the thing is that if Tumblr goes under, well, I'll just stop using Tumblr as a link blog and incorporate those quick, off-the-cuff posts into my DW blogging or find some other alternative. I have been regarding Twitter as a pure bubble financially for a while, and I'd miss it if it died or became unusable, but eh.
The difference with Dreamwidth is that I'm very heavily committed here. I'd like some return on my investment, not the money so much because I knew when I spent it that I was gambling on promoting a site I believed in. But the time and energy and the friction created within my social circle when I left LJ, I would be devastated if it turned out that I was pouring all that into a bottomless pit. If DW died, or got sold out to something like 6Apart, I'd have nowhere to go except back to LJ (which I agree doesn't look financially promising itself). And since I basically can't bear LJ any more, that would mean losing a devastatingly huge chunk of my online social life and intellectual stimulation. I'm afraid of that, not because I want to nitpick and criticize Dreamwidth, but because I really really don't want it to happen.
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And ok, sure, you can point to other sites that lose money, but the thing is that if Tumblr goes under, well, I'll just stop using Tumblr as a link blog and incorporate those quick, off-the-cuff posts into my DW blogging or find some other alternative. I have been regarding Twitter as a pure bubble financially for a while, and I'd miss it if it died or became unusable, but eh.
The difference with Dreamwidth is that I'm very heavily committed here. I'd like some return on my investment, not the money so much because I knew when I spent it that I was gambling on promoting a site I believed in. But the time and energy and the friction created within my social circle when I left LJ, I would be devastated if it turned out that I was pouring all that into a bottomless pit. If DW died, or got sold out to something like 6Apart, I'd have nowhere to go except back to LJ (which I agree doesn't look financially promising itself). And since I basically can't bear LJ any more, that would mean losing a devastatingly huge chunk of my online social life and intellectual stimulation. I'm afraid of that, not because I want to nitpick and criticize Dreamwidth, but because I really really don't want it to happen.