DayOne subscription model and people's emotional reactions

[egret]

 Hi everyone, I'm new to the comm but not to journaling.

I was really fascinated by this debate today and wondered if anyone else saw it. I am, like many, a longtime user of the Mac/iOS journaling app DayOne. If you are not familiar, it's a very beautifully designed app that syncs between all your devices and lets you insert photos as well as whatever your tweets or instagram posts were that day, etc. It automatically records the place you're posting from and the weather in that location at the time of your post. It's terrific. There have always been some vaguely answered questions about the security of their syncing system though, but I figured nothing I was writing was valuable to anyone but me. Anyway, just recently DayOne announced that they are moving to a subscription model and going forward users will have to pay a monthly/yearly fee. I've seen discussion in several places (MacRumors [in link], a Mac focused FB group) and people are overwhelmingly outraged. 

I am annoyed and unwilling to pay because I will feel locked in and I feel like I've already paid for the software and then paid again to upgrade it and enough is enough. As I read so many angry comments, though, I wondered if part of this anger is because it's a journaling app, and we have emotions of reliance and trust in our journals, and to be reminded that our outpourings are being monetized is wounding. 

My personal solution is that I am going to begin moving my entries by pasting and copying them into dreamwidth, which will then be my only internet journal. I have a paid DW journal, and I don't mind that subscription at all -- I think it feels different because the DW developers have always been open and transparent about how they're making their money from this service. And of course it feels different because there is still at least a vestige of online community on DW, unlike a solo journaling app. If I need to write something in the notes app of my phone and then copy and paste it into Dreamwidth that evening, I can live with that. 

I guess I am curious as to whether others
- have feelings one way or another about DayOne or any of the other journaling apps
- have feelings about Dreamwidth itself as a journal that is different from other journals
- have ideas about our emotional connections to our journaling tools

Sorry if this post is too much for a brand new member of the group; I'll delete it if it's inappropriate. I was happy to find this group though!
Crossposting some of this to my own journal. 

Comments

[annofowlshire]

I was a Day One user a couple of years ago, and I liked it, but then Day One 2 came out and they wanted extra money from me to upgrade, and I said, "nah." Now that they're doing subscriptions, I'm glad I jumped ship earlier.

Being an old-timer on the 'net (*waves her cane*), I've seen too many sites/apps/etc. come and go or change in undesirable fashions to put my forever-trust in the Internet or third party sites, even if I like the devs. They may have the best intentions, but businesses can fall apart. Some people say you should have your own hosting/domain for anything you want to keep, but I've seen the blog of deceased friend vanish forever because his parents didn't understand that you had to renew it and let it all lapse. (I found what I could on the Wayback Machine and sent it to them, but it was hardly the whole thing.) Furthermore, growing issues of Internet privacy kind of makes me want to keep my private thoughts offline, rather than storing them on a third party site. I recently deleted several years worth of brain dumping on 750words, for example.

So these days, I've reverted to doing most of my private journaling offline (pen and paper, although I think a text doc is a perfectly reasonable substitute for those who are more comfortable digitally, just keep it backed up offline, too), and I use DW for the more social bits--thoughts or events or photos I specifically want to share with others.

tl'dr I have lots of thoughts and emotions about journaling and journalling sites XD

[eleanorjane]

I've never really got into Day One - I know it had a lottttt of fans, but it never felt like the right tool for the job for me. If I was going to write in something like that, why not just a synced text file or something of that ilk? That was the question I could never get past to want to use it.

That said, I can imagine how frustrating this change would be. At least existing users will keep their status instead of losing features they already have.

I suspect part of the problem is that they're a cross-platform app servicing mobile as well as desktop users; app development is notably hard to make financially sustainable, and the bulk of non- or low-paying users might well cause a burden that would make their services unsustainable.

[finch]

I've never used Day One but I remember when 750words tried to switch to a subscription-only model and it exploded badly enough that he backpedaled and grandfathered in everyone who already had an account.