please, please tell me this is a delayed april fool's joke

[sophiaserpentia]

LJ will now offer accounts which display ads on your journal and friend's page

But, hey! They'll be targeted ads, based on the interests in your interest list. Congratulations, you all belong to a focus group now!

Comments

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

Well, only a voluntary subset of users will be part of the focus group.

The Sponsored+ account level is an option for users who want access to premium features but would rather have advertising on their journal and Friends page and in the LiveJournal site than purchase a Paid account.

Personally, I've got no problem with it as long as it stays that way.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

At the moment, paid users will not have to view ads on sponsored LJ pages. I wouldn't bet the farm that this will never change.

[ubiquity.livejournal.com]

Ah. But free users will?

[ubiquity.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but we'll see the ads on the comment pages of those who opt in.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Well, according to the handy dandy chart, paid users actually won't. Free users will.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

...Any change that needs charts to explain is too complicated.

(I meant to link to this whole thing when they were talking about it in lj-biz. But bleh.)

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Life is hard.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

I guess this means that all LJ users who opt into this ad thing will get zapped from my friends list.

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

If you have a paid account you won't see ads.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

The way I understand it, if I respond to a comment of someone with ads, I will see the ad when that page reloads.

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's so, but that's not what they are saying here:

For Paid or Permanent account holders: Your support has kept LJ alive and growing all these years. We appreciate your continued support and you will get the most features and the highest storage limits. You'll never see ads as long as you're logged in, and no one will see ads on your journal whether they're logged in or not.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

I hope you are right. You tend to scrutinize these sorts of things better than I do.

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

I hope you are right.

Oh, yeah, so do I. Or I'll be majorly pissed too.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I'm selfish, but ... I'm a paid user and I'll never see an ad. No one will ever see an ad on my journal, either. I might, occasionally, see one if one of my friends goes Sponsored+ ... in which case I swat them in the head and pony up the five dollars to make them Paid. No sweat.

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

If your friends go Cheapo+ you still don't have to see their adverts on your friends page. Hurrah!

I'm torn between it being a Bad Thing (adverts? On lj? nooooo!) and a Good Thing (people can get more cool things, for free!)

But it won't actually affect me, as I'm paid. So it's only a theoretical dilemna.

[metaphorge.livejournal.com]

This is also how I feel about this.

The whole thing doesn't really bother me so much, but then again, if I were running LiveJournal there would be no free accounts.

The only place I can see this becoming an issue is for communities; I'm not sure how this will be handled there.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

I would never have gotten rid of invite codes, either.

[metaphorge.livejournal.com]

Okay, after reading about communities, this should not be an issue unless a community maintainer chooses the "sponsored" level for the community journal, which I see no incentive to do.

paid accounts

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

if there were many paid accounts I would be more
worried but the percentage of paid accounts is
very small and perhaps there will be little
temptation to hit on us, and more gained by
the paid accounts ad free so that more might
pay...
eudora ,the email access thing ,has had this
system for years with unpaid eudora subsidized
by ads.

[neitherday.livejournal.com]

I love the new ad system. Virtually any other site the size of LiveJournal would be forcing ads on all free users at this point, with the free users getting nothing extra for them being there. However, not only is LiveJournal not forcing anyone to have ads, they are giving people the option of having ads for extra benefits.

[sorchar.livejournal.com]

Usually, when I do a focus group, I get paid at least $25 an hour. Fuck that shit.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm not super-shocked by this, considering on MySpace, you get bombarded with ads every time you click a button. But then I think MySpace is the equivalent of late 90's Geocities sites...

[amokk]

It's a voluntary thing and Brad's said a few times he had to basically be hit over the head a few times to accept that there are people who want this.


So, people want to have it, people who don't want ads don't have to have them, so what's the problem here exactly?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Internet ads are like kudzu. I'm concerned that a year from now, it won't seem all that unreasonable to the people who run LJ to make paid users look at ads.

[amokk]

I doubt it, but it's completely possible. But things change, and we have to accept that sometimes things change in ways we don't always like. :)

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

You don't HAVE to have a sponsored account. But yeah, it makes me uneasy too.

[mystiphi.livejournal.com]

They can focus on me NOT using my free accounts !