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right. swear last time tonight. probably. unless its porn

Wow.

Interview with Anton Nosik, the director of the blog division of SUP corporations, translated by

russianswinga, posted by

darkrosetiger. Original article is here.

Brief quote:

Reporter: Users that are unhappy about the fact that the right to a base account is reserved only for bloggers that registered before the 12th of march, are calling for a boycott of your resource. How massive do you expect this boycott to be?

Nosik: I don't know any of LJ posters familiar to me, those I have friended and commented, that would want to join said boycott. I honestly don't know any people that would seriously take up that initiative. So I am presuming such an idea to be marginal at best. Something like calling all the advertisers in the American section of livejournal and calling on them to cancel their ads

Reporter: Have they actually called them?

Nosik: Of course not. Where will you find such idiots that will call serious companies? It's one thing - to call a newspaper in hope that they will give you 15 minutes of fame on their page. But a proper firm? The first thing you'll get asked is "so who exactly are you trying to reach? What is this about and why the hell should we care?"

Read the rest. Charming. Really.

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Yeah, cos that's really the sort of advertisement you want for your company...

It'd be funny if people actually did call the companies now though, just to spite him.

I know of people that really do. It kind of makes me wonder if SUP really thinks it'll all go away quietly. Because SA really tried, and that totally did not work.

SA made it go away by selling. SUP don't seem to have caught on to this yet.

I predict LJ will probably change hands again within the next year or so, if SUP don't manage to destroy it first.

A win on the Euromillions when it's rolled over several times would be nice...

It says a lot about "capitalism" in Russian, methinks.

shakes head. I can only assume he doesn't plan on having American customers in his long term planning?

That's... kind of rude. And serious companies? Clearly people he sees as whackjobs should limit their interaction to other things he thinks are whacky too. I was ignoring the strike thingy but this is annoying, and makes me want to do something to this guy to make him realise how impolite he is in fact being. *sends disapproving coldly polite glare to Russia*

Here from friendsfriends...

In a situation where people are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behaviour.

BUH? What planet does he live on? Seriously? Because I don't think informing people of issues is blackmail, even the advertisers. Or if it is, I'm seriously glad I missed that memo. Holy messy taco, Batman.

Yeah, I won't be renewing my paid account. I'd been waiting for the Russians to prove themselves good or bad before making a decision, and this is it. I mean, as the head of their blogs division, this guy is reflecting the opinion and ideology of his company...and I don't want to give him any of my money. Ever.

*longs for an LJ of our own to happen sooner rather than later*

hmm, reading the whole article, it struck me how much of the friction this interview is causing (and will cause) can be attributed, to a large part, the culture clash between Russian-brand of capitalism and American-brand capitalism. This should be interesting.

What is the Russian brand of capitalism?

Mind you, I'll try to explain, based on my admittedly shallow understanding of how new Russia is conducting its business and governance in the post-Yeltsin post-perestroika era.

In any case, what I mean is that as opposed to the American philosophy of 'customer is king' (even if in certain cases it's lip service), in Russia it seems to be the opposite -- the men who are the Russian business elite now are largely seen to have ties with the former KGB and/or the Russian mafia -- where the customers is almost an afterthought in the pursuit of the bottom line/party line. (Not that it differs much in how self-serving American corporation can be, but the key difference is how unabashed and blunt they are about it)

And that all these shenanigans are leaking into the English-language side of Livejournal kinda brings into context some concerns the Russian-speaking LJers had with SUP's acquisition. I'm not sure how aware of you how popular LJ is with what the Russian govt would consider 'dissenters' or 'subversive elements'.

Anyway, that's my $0.02. YMMV

So, basically, you're saying that it's robber baron capitalism--which America had for a good while, too--as opposed to our current form of slight-controlled-by-regs capitalism. Consumers and employees are merely grist in the mill for the robber barons and no one except the robber barons are well-served by the system.

Lovely to know. Explains a lot, though.

That has been my impression, yes. Mind you, Putin has been taking some steps to control the excesses but it seems more towards his own political gain rather than any genuine commitment to reform.

This interview is so offensive, it's amazing. I really wish there was something we could do without losing the joy of using the LJ.

By simple business rule, you will not belittle your customers, ever. No matter what you think about them, you will at lest keep silent. Now, he practically calls their customers idiots. Way to go. I doubt that there any customers left that buy the official "we care and community rocks!"-propacanda.

I planned to ignore the boycott. They tried to be slick, got caught, stopped being slick. I was just waiting for their next attempt, curious what it might be.

Now this guy has annoyed me.

*shrugs*

I've four other blogs. I can deal with no LJ for a day.

P.S. I'm still smug I've never paid for LJ. *g*

*snickers*

I don't think the boycott is going to have any affect at all... in fact it's kind of a meaningless gesture when there'll be a huge upsurge in usage the next day, proving that we doooo need our LJ.

So what do we do? All move to IJ? Vox? Wait for a better solution to come along? Can we make one? Isn't LJ open software??

Maybe that would take money, though. Poot.

I hate that I was young, naive and have a permanent account.

I agree with this comment, right down to the last sentence, heh.

Typical Russian attitude, actually. They're frequently gobsmacked by our American chutzpah.

"I'm trying to reach your director of marketing, name N. Is he / she / it in? No? May I speak to their assistant, then, please? Thank you."

Also, bear in mind that Russians really just don't get that Americans with or without money are, nonetheless, consumers -- and in America, the consumer is King.

Me? I'm decamping to IJ come the 30th

Edited 2008-03-19 14:44 (UTC)

It' seemed a very Russian esque statement, but I hate to base my suppositions on bad movies. It's rude. But apparently there is more cinema verite' than I thought.

Back up a lot and know where everyone is going in the event of an emergency! We should have drills like the fire drills in elementary school.

Point. Of course, LJ used to be open source (hence IJ, GJ, etc), but isn't anymore. But nonetheless, earlier versions are, and there hasn't been much implemented in the last few years I can't live without.

Simply put though, our alternative is to go to a hosting company and set up shop. It'll take re-tooling the code a bit to make it work right. Really, what we need is modular design that can run on different servers but still act as a kind of network... Some type of p2p LJ?

God! They are such blatant ass holes. I really don't understand how they can think talking about their user base like this will get them anywhere.

You know, it read more as bravado in the face of blank horror. Like, you wonder what SA told them?

SA: Very quiet. Friendly people. Always go with the flow. KTHXBI!
SUP: *blinks slowly*

true.. very very true. Probably made us sound like a bunch of sheep just so SUP would take us.

Dear LJ PR department,

you're doing GREAT!!

*headdesking a lot*,
me

It is a brilliant bit of marketing there. One might think they want us to run far far away and take our useless content with us!

Not to be overly paranoid, BUT. As far as I know, the servers are still in SF, and the owners are in Russia. This puts them in an interesting position legally. Basically, the servers are subject to U.S. law, but the company is, well, not, in the final analysis. So, they can pretty much take all our data, sell it for whatever they can get for it, and potentially walk away.

Actually, it's come to light that the translation is wrong (probably deliberately wrong).

liz_marcs did a good post on it today, and called bullshit, while providing a link to the correct translation. He sounds more PR-challenged than Russian mob.

http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/320154.html

Hmm. I'm reading it, but I'm not seeing a huge difference in content between the two translations.

I think it's all in the tone. The first translation makes him sound like more of a dickwad and ass, and used to support the 'strike'. The second just makes him sound like an idiot and a dick. IMO, anyways.

You and I both, actually. I was like "what? I don't see a big difference?" Tone is important, more important are the words. At least, to me. I'm not going to give him excuses about the disconnect either. I'm sorry, but there's more than the US and Russia involved here. So many more countries. Heck, just exclude both Americas entirely, and you've still got a wide spread. And he seems contemptuous of all the 'vocal' users.

Blackmail is when you threaten to tell someone's wife that the spouse is cheating on her with that personal assistant on top of the home office, and there's pictures to prove it. Giving someone the silent treatment, or having a hissy fit, is not blackmail.

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