July 24, 2002








  • Here's a clarifying comment by the XangaTeam's Monsur, now made an indispensible preface to this post:


    Ack!  This was NEVER supposed to be the case!  I'll take the fall, I inadvertently introduced a bug when rolling out this premium background feature.  This feature wasn't supposed to replace the ability to add backgrounds to your site, it was just supposed to make things easier for Premium members.  Anyway, backgrounds should be back to normal, sorry for the inconvenience...

    Posted 7/24/2002 at 10:51 pm by monsur - delete
    And here's the post that prompted Monsur's comment:


    Note to the Possibly Perplexed:


    Apparently, Xanga has decided that the ability to add a background image to your blog is now a Premium Feature only (*imagines the screams from the non-Premies*).  If you have Premium, you can restore your image at the bottom of the "Look and Feel" module.  If you don't have Premium, I guess the message is: "Do without--or Get It."  But, hey, remember, I'm just the messenger--I didn't devise the message!


    Additionally, it appears that Premium members can now easily add music to the blog, again, at the bottom of the "Look and Feel" module. 


    So What's the Strategy?  Well, I once taught a course in Economics at Graduate level in college. So let me, with a trained but now rusty outlook, attempt a metaphorically foreshortened economic analysis of this services realignment as I think that the BlogTeam may see it :


    Only Premium can do backgrounds anymore. By this, we at Xanga are sending a message:

    We don't value Free subscribers as much anymore.  If losing your background wants to make you quit, we'll miss you, but Godspeed. 


    Non-converting Free membership was increasing exponentially and the resulting inordinately ever-higher ratio of Free/Premium membership was becoming financially and technically unsustainable anyway. 


    By making Free less attractive (and Premium, by comparison, more attractive) we hope to induce your conversion to Premium, and expect some to make this conversion, thus helping to secure the ongoing finances needed to sustain and expand our community. 


    If you do not opt for Premium and decide to stay with diminished options, that's OK with us.  If you instead decide to leave (or never join), as we expect some will, that's fine, too, since you thereby reduce the ratio of Free/Premium membership thus making this operation more cost effective. 


    Basically, there's only so much to share of this ever-more popular cyber-pie and we decided by this readjustment to better assure that our paying subscribers are not negatively impacted by a strain from comparatively too-attractive , tumultuously-growing Free subscriptions.


    Remember: With a free lunch you don't always get desert.  And as the number of free-lunchers rapidly grows, while the growth of the cyber-pie continues but slower, you should expect the scarcer deserts to first go to the paying diners. But don't feel bad: We're still giving you one helluva free lunch, if that's all you want.

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