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If Six Apart goes public
Jun. 2nd, 2007 10:53 amI mentioned this on a very thoughtful post on what was really motivating the deletions of journals, and I think the author was very likely dead on.
An IPO, though, could be a golden opportunity for LJ users. If we were to mobilize and start buying up that IPO, it is conceivable that LJ users could ultimately have a controlling interest in the company and thus have some say over what is done and how the TOS is implemented.
It would take some planning. Obviously, not everyone has access to buying stock.
There would be two possible ways of handling it. The first would be to set up a donation fund run by a fully neutral party, such as a law firm or brokerage house and pay for the service. If the stock lost value or people weren't willing to continue to donate to handle the account, this could run into problems, although it is perfectly possible that there are firms out there who have people who use LJ who would be willing to waive the fees. It would have to be researched.
The second way would be to handle it grass-roots fashion by having people willing to purchase extra stock for their flist. I actually favor this because it would spread out the stock nicely and people would know who they were donating their money to.
I also prefer the grassroots approach to limit potential profiteering. If the extra stock-buying is limited to flist people, then any one person isn't going to be collecting thousands of dollars that may or may not be going to a stock purchase--the risk is limited to the pool any given flist is willing to create.
If we wanted to be more organized about it, we could start a group that had people who would accept donations to buy more stock, but that would work best if we had the ground rules laid out in advance--like maybe it would have to be paid members who had owned their LJ account for at least a year, and rather than letting people choose specific members, donations would be spread out over the entire group so that no one person got a disproportionate amount of money. We would also want people to be fully aware that the person buying the stock had control of it and would bear any risk and reap any profit.
Either method would work, the important thing would be to get it organized.
An IPO, though, could be a golden opportunity for LJ users. If we were to mobilize and start buying up that IPO, it is conceivable that LJ users could ultimately have a controlling interest in the company and thus have some say over what is done and how the TOS is implemented.
It would take some planning. Obviously, not everyone has access to buying stock.
There would be two possible ways of handling it. The first would be to set up a donation fund run by a fully neutral party, such as a law firm or brokerage house and pay for the service. If the stock lost value or people weren't willing to continue to donate to handle the account, this could run into problems, although it is perfectly possible that there are firms out there who have people who use LJ who would be willing to waive the fees. It would have to be researched.
The second way would be to handle it grass-roots fashion by having people willing to purchase extra stock for their flist. I actually favor this because it would spread out the stock nicely and people would know who they were donating their money to.
I also prefer the grassroots approach to limit potential profiteering. If the extra stock-buying is limited to flist people, then any one person isn't going to be collecting thousands of dollars that may or may not be going to a stock purchase--the risk is limited to the pool any given flist is willing to create.
If we wanted to be more organized about it, we could start a group that had people who would accept donations to buy more stock, but that would work best if we had the ground rules laid out in advance--like maybe it would have to be paid members who had owned their LJ account for at least a year, and rather than letting people choose specific members, donations would be spread out over the entire group so that no one person got a disproportionate amount of money. We would also want people to be fully aware that the person buying the stock had control of it and would bear any risk and reap any profit.
Either method would work, the important thing would be to get it organized.
