theljstaff ([info]theljstaff) wrote in [info]lj_biz,
@ 2007-10-26 15:56:00
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Current mood: thankful

DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge
Amazing things are happening with the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge. Thus far, over $260,000 in the form of books, supplies, technology, and other resources has been raised for more than 30,000 students from low-income families. Within 3 weeks, the Challenge has prompted nearly 2000 blog readers to donate to classroom projects in high-need schools.



You can see how all the leaders are performing (including Stephen Colbert, Mitt Romney and a Brooklyn woman who has raised more than $100,000) at DonorsChoose.org.

The Blogger Challenge ends October 31st which means there are still six days left for YOU to make a difference in the lives of public school students. As we mentioned previously, Six Apart will be giving awards to the bloggers who help the greatest number of students. Which project are you supporting? How many lives will you change? Let us know in the comments!

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[info]cortanah
2007-10-26 11:03 pm UTC (link)
Those kids look so cute.

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[info]keke_45
2007-11-23 09:47 pm UTC (link)
They are cute aren't they.

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[info]beckyzoole
2007-10-26 11:14 pm UTC (link)
Hurray for [info]tomatonation, the lead fundraiser by far!

I added enough to my LJ donation to complete the funding for the Isn't Part Of Music Listening? project, to get a good-quality cd/cassette player and 5 blank cassettes for a music teacher to use in a very-low-income school in North Carolina. 60 students in the 3rd - 5th grade will benefit from this immediately, and the equipment will still be there to help student in the future.

I'm so glad you helped me do it, LJ!

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[info]sukiko_kun
2007-10-26 11:35 pm UTC (link)
First page.

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[info]indomitability
2007-10-26 11:37 pm UTC (link)
If anyone's still looking for one to donate to, I have one for my students/classroom: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=113789

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[info]7rin
2007-10-27 01:36 am UTC (link)
Sorry, would much rather donate stuff to schools in my own country.

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[info]danaseilhan
2007-11-02 05:24 pm UTC (link)
well then... do so. Anyone stopping you?

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[info]saralogan
2007-10-27 01:51 am UTC (link)
I am so glad you finally posted an entry about the policy clarifications! Thanks so much!

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[info]spacequeen
2007-10-27 02:53 am UTC (link)
Buahaha. You beat me to it!♥

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[info]barbayat
2007-10-27 11:11 am UTC (link)
*lol* for a moment I was confused (as in "Did I miss anything?") but then my brain started working!

Funny enough today my paid account ran out and I am no sad about it. Especially considering insanejournal gives me 100 icons for free!!

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[info]saralogan
2007-10-27 04:39 pm UTC (link)
That is a great icon!

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[info]skinst_bomb
2007-10-27 01:37 pm UTC (link)
Indeed. Makes me wonder how long it'll take.

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[info]saralogan
2007-10-27 04:40 pm UTC (link)
I said a few times before, it took them nine months to update users on Omniture. I expect to wait at least that long for an update on the policy changes.

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[info]skinst_bomb
2007-10-29 11:01 am UTC (link)
That depresses me. A lot.

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[info]saralogan
2007-10-29 05:03 pm UTC (link)
But if you set low expectations, you can't be disappointed!

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[info]moth2fic
2007-10-27 07:58 am UTC (link)
I agree with [info]7rin's comment - quite apart from the shipping costs!! I know you're an American firm but it seems sad that you never run anything for your subscribers elsewhere

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[info]azrael2002
2007-10-28 08:39 am UTC (link)
I can do this same thing through programs supported by local newspapers. Or just do it myself. And know for SURE that my money's going to where I want it to be going.

Sorry, dudes. But you're just too fucking gimpy and fail-filled for me to entrust any hard-earned money to, for any reason.

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[info]a_blue_moon_cat
2007-10-28 08:36 pm UTC (link)
*drums fingers* Where are the policy clarifications that you guys promised? Why didn't you tell anyone about the flag this post option, just snuck it in there? Why, after pages of comments that people didn't want the new customization zone, you guys put it up anyhow?

What is so wrong with you people that you can't even communicate to us about important things? Your level of customer service is below incompetent. I've worked in customer service off and on for years, and had I ever given so little customer service, I would have been fired from my position, and rightly so.

Where is that PR person you guys had come over to LJ from 6A? Why isn't she talking to us any more?

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[info]azrael2002
2007-10-28 10:44 pm UTC (link)
What is so wrong with you people that you can't even communicate to us about important things?

They're only interested in making moneymoneymoneyMONEY!, that's what's wrong with them. MONEY is all that's important to them, not satisfied customers. The customers' (read: OUR) input and opinions don't mean jack jive to them unless they're ideas on how to spam other users in ever more intrusive and annoying ways.

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[info]flexor
2007-10-29 12:42 pm UTC (link)
You're not the customer. You are the merchandise.

Snap.com is their customer. Pepsi is their customer. HP is their customer.

As has been noted before: If you want to be sure that your hosting company don't mess with your content, host it yourself.

So now I'm off to a nice game of "hunt the goatse popup".

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[info]azrael2002
2007-11-03 12:51 am UTC (link)
Methinks someone needs a lesson in how to use a dictionary. Whether it's you, or 6A, well... doesn't matter. SOMEONE does.

"Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law

Main Entry: cus·to·mer
Function: noun
1 : a person or business that purchases a commodity or service"

Hmm. WE pay (or allow advertising in lieu of payment) to use this service. Now, children, what does that make us?

CUSTOMERS. The very TEXTBOOK definition OF, even.

Now, Pepsi, Miramax, etc, are ADVERTISERS.

"WordNet
advertiser

noun
someone whose business is advertising"

They are BUSINESSES who have BUSINESS contracts with 6A to SELL MORE THINGS to US, the CUSTOMERS. THEY are not the customers, themselves.

It can't possibly be any clearer, unless you speak Ancient Hebrew and don't understand modern English.

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[info]flexor
2007-11-05 08:08 am UTC (link)
Let's see if I can explain this: What happened to LJ happens to every website that grows beyond a million or so users. It gets bought out by venture capitalists, who then proceed to squeeze as much money out of the userbase as they possibly can.

Now these nice people in the beverage industry, the personal-information-snorting industry and the printer farmers pay 6A for the privilege of pushing their stuff onto the SEVENTEEN MILLION USERS that 6A no doubt claims it has. (That many of these are either double accounts or no longer using LJ is immaterial, beyond the scope of the suits). I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that these fine folk pay 6A so much money for the privilege of peddling their wares at the userbase that the entire userbase can stop paying up and still 6A could make a profit.

They don't need you. They just need your headcount. The fact that you can't get out without a) losing your years' worth of blog and b) losing track of your friends just makes it sweeter for them.

Now what can stink up their deals for them is people posting porn, illegal content or other stuff that Big Brands Don't Want To Be Associated With. But they have a solution. They make lots of noise about stamping down hard on This Sort Of Thing. Yeah, the neo-nazis were never in the target line because they have guns, the pro-ana groups never appeared on their radar at all, the pedophiles just create another account and the smart ones aren't on LJ at all. So they picked another group to stamp down hard on: The HP slashfic writers. So 6A breaks a lance for all those things that make life worth living, and nobody gets pissed off except a few HP fans. So you associate those with pedophilia and ignore them. You've been seen to take appropriate action against icky stuff and that's what counts.

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[info]azrael2002
2007-11-06 09:42 am UTC (link)
Nope. Sorry. Words mean things.

People who pay for a service are customers. It doesn't matter how many of them there are (otherwise people who shopped at Wal-Mart or ate at McDonald's wouldn't be customers. And that's just a retarded thing to imply.)

People who pay for advertising space are advertisers.

And pissing off your CUSTOMERS (who pay a huge chunk of your paycheck) in favor of your ADVERTISERS (who... never gave a flying fuck about HP erotica - homo- or otherwise - but who DID voice concern when they heard that 6A was tacitly supporting anorexia) is a MONUMENTALLY BAD IDEA. Because a BAD customer reaction towards a service provider COSTS SAID SERVICE PROVIDER ADVERTISING REVENUE. Don't believe me? Look and see what happened to Don Imus - he got fired because CUSTOMERS who subscribed and/or listened to (cable/radio) the station he worked for were PISSED OFF over his comments, and the ADVERTISERS wound up threatening to withdraw their money.

That's the long AND short of it.

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[info]flexor
2007-11-07 11:54 am UTC (link)
You are right, of course, that if you pay for a service from LJ, then you are a customer. But what I was trying to get across was that even if LJ drops a few hundred users by the wayside, they lose maybe (ICBA to look up the price of an account) a few thousand dollars.

Now the Pepsis and other businesses buy from Six Apart the right to put their ads on our blogs. Hence, they are both customers and advertisers. One does not exclude the other. Also, they probably bring in a lot more cash than the userbase. And they do it in nice big lumps, right now.

Users can't go anywhere without losing their friends list and years worth of blog. Though you can back up your blog, but then your entries no longer show up in your friends' logs. So a few of them bugger off to InsaneJournal. Who cares?

Now the LJ people have contrived to pull off a number of spectacular blunders in a row: "Tough on child abuse - tough on the victims of child abuse", "This looks like child porn and we know better than you, Missy Artist", "Here's a sponsored V-gift, Mr. Ad-Free User", "Your post a few years ago violates the Terms Of Service that we are defnitely going to publish before the heat-death of the universe", "We have carefully selected the two positive responses to our new shiny popups and Snap is now busily harvesting your data" and most recently "Hotmail refusing our notifications as spam is not our problem". This has pissed off a lot of users, but hey! We're up to $BIGNUM journals now. Never mind that most of those are doubles or abandoned journals. But hey! Even if they do leave, they leave their names and blogs behind, and that's the number Six Apart waves in the face of its Most Valued Advertising Customers.

Just look at these pages: We're up to twenty pages at the time of writing - maybe a hundred users. Birdseed. But one advertiser leaving? That's at least a million dollars down the tube for a substantial ad campaign.

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[info]danaseilhan
2007-11-02 05:26 pm UTC (link)
They can't be that interested in money or they'd remember you make money FROM your customers.

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[info]azrael2002
2007-11-03 12:41 am UTC (link)
Pepsi, HP, etc all pay 6A to allow them to advertise on the site. This brings in money for 6A. So, rather than trying to make their customers happy, thus enticing them to spend more money on more services (assuming said services WORK) and goods, they're taking the easy - and unprofessional - route of ignoring customers in favor of advertisers.

(What 6A has apparently forgotten, is that advertising doesn't mean jack shit when there's progressively fewer customers to look at it. Or when browsers like Firefox get neat little things like AdBlock that can sweep unwanted crap under the proverbial rug.)

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[info]danaseilhan
2007-11-03 03:30 am UTC (link)
You know, I would love to bring in advertiser money if I had a business that could be a platform for it, but the second they start telling me what my content should be or start trying to override my customers, they're gone. In the past when I've played around with affiliate links, I've made sure to stick with companies that accept you no matter what you are.

I think companies that accept advertising should use it for growth only, and rely on customer income for the day-to-day. But then, I guess I'm just stupid and don't know anything about business. (Actually, that's true.)

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[info]emmuzka
2007-10-29 01:01 pm UTC (link)
How is it possible that there is only 17 comments? *tests if these are filtered*

On Aug. 13th, 2007, [info]theljstaff wrote:

So, we're working on creating a single policy document that is linked from the bottom of every page in the LiveJournal application. To be completely honest, it's going to take us a little bit of time to get that done, since we want to work with everyone from our community as well as the usual folks like lawyers. We think it will be a few weeks, and we'll update on progress as that happens.

So, where is it?

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[info]0xmahliax0
2007-10-29 05:08 pm UTC (link)
It seems to me that there were a hell of a lot more comments the other day...is it just me?

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[info]emmuzka
2007-10-29 06:32 pm UTC (link)
No screening but they delete the non-charitable comments afterwards?

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about my DonorsChoose experience
[info]kajiracad
2007-10-30 11:12 am UTC (link)
i gave last year to DonorsChoose. i specifically chose a teacher at the school around the corner from my house -- special ed in a middle school. last week i got a packet of thank you notes written by children and a typed letter from a teacher -- in another county, a totally different school.

i'm deeply disappointed and so i'm not participating this year. i haven't begun to investigate the "switch" yet, but i really wanted my $130+ gift to go to "my" school, not some other one 30 miles up the expressway.

still, KIDS GOT BOOKS -- which was the point -- so i'm not angry, just disappointed. :(

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Re: about my DonorsChoose experience
[info]libraryace
2007-11-01 07:10 pm UTC (link)
If you have a specific school in mind, it's probably best to talk to them directly about what they need most. If you want your donation to remain anonymous, the administrator you deal with will respect your confidentiality.

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Re: about my DonorsChoose experience
[info]bluecarolina
2007-11-07 03:02 am UTC (link)
i made a donation there recently and there was a question i had to fill out that asked me what i wanted to do if the project didn't get fully funded within the allotted amount of time. i believe it defaulted to "give my donation to another similar project," but you could also change it to a couple of other options, one of which would give you the chance to pick another project yourself to use it towards.

i wonder if that's what happened with you, though i don't know how the site worked a year ago, and perhaps there was no option to change the default back then. just an idea :)

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[info]twicet
2007-11-02 07:04 am UTC (link)
Hi I know this is not on topic but I have tried several routes and so far no replies. My contact email is a hotmail acc. and I am no longer receiving mail from livejournal. Hotmail states the prob. is not at their end and you state it is with hotmail, can something be done about this?

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[info]azrael2002
2007-11-02 11:43 am UTC (link)
This problem has been affecting a lot of people. 6A continually brushes it off as unimportant.

Apparently, they haven't bothered to update their status with Hotmail (and apparently a lot of other email providers) to prove that they're not spam. So, from what I gather, new anti-spam filtering policies are screening out emails from LJ.

And, OBVIOUSLY, it's Hotmail's fault that 6A is staffed by lazy slags who can't be bothered to send out a simple communique that says "Hey, guys, we're not spam! Please let us send emails to our customers now!"

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[info]saralogan
2007-11-06 08:56 am UTC (link)
THESE NEW POLICIES ARE SO GREAT! THANKS FOR THE INFORMING US OF THEM!

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[info]saralogan
2007-11-07 06:20 pm UTC (link)
Why bad employees don't get fired, one of the top articles on CNN.com right now.

Have you ever received poor service from someone you expected should be helping you as part of his or her job?

The answer is almost certainly "yes."

And, if you're like most people, you have probably also experienced the frustration of working with someone who made your own job more difficult.

In both cases you may have wondered, "Why don't they just fire this person?"

Firing someone may seem easy in theory, but it is often a last resort for an employer.

A bad employee's supervisor may know that the employee isn't performing up to snuff, but that supervisor -- or the company -- may have what they consider to be a good reason for not firing the employee.

Whenever you encounter someone who you think deserves to be fired -- either in your own workplace or elsewhere -- consider if any of the following might be the reason the bad employee is still on the job:
Don't Miss

* Wanted: Workers who play well with others
* The worst way to shake hands
* Small businesses want 'meaningful' gifts

1. The employee has a relationship with someone higher up.

2. The boss relies on the employee.

3. The employee brings more value to the company than he or she costs.

4. The boss thinks it could be worse.

5. The boss is afraid of the employee.

6. The boss feels sorry for the employee.

7. The boss doesn't want to go through the hiring process.

8. The employee knows something.

9. The employee has everybody fooled.

10. He or she is not really a bad employee.

SO WHICH ONE IS IT, 6A?

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[info]saralogan
2007-11-17 08:38 pm UTC (link)

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[info]shaunanigans
2007-11-19 07:51 pm UTC (link)
Uhm... Where did all the comments go?

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[info]jupiter_star
2007-11-26 08:25 am UTC (link)
So...why is it that this community, where most of the important information has been posted for the last, oh, six months or so, and where the fairly important updates regarding site policy and whatnot are to be displayes, is suddenly no longer listed under the news communities? AT ALL, even when I click "View More?"

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[info]saralogan
2007-11-28 06:09 pm UTC (link)
LET ME SHOW YOU MY TRANSPARENT BUSINESS PRACTICES.





MY TRANSPARENT BUSINESS PRACTICES LET ME SHOW YOU THEM.

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[info]nardasarmy
2007-11-30 02:25 pm UTC (link)
If you mark your journal as 'adult concepts' in Livejournal's new safety system, so that underage users can't read your posts, what will people who are logged out or without a journal see? Will people surfing in from links elsewhere suddenly see a blank journal?

Anyone know?

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