Today's headline: Livejournal sells out, 10 million users rise up in protest.

[bladespark]

Livejournal asks us if we would like them to sell out, the general response is negative, and some lj users call for those who think this is a bad idea to speak up, in hopes of getting a significant fraction of lj's total memebership to respond.

If you think deliberately seeking out corporations to "sponsor" features and communities, and posting ads on those features and communities for those sponsors, ads which even those who have paid accounts would not be able to avoid seeing while in those areas, isn't something you approve of, you may just want to go and say so.

Honestly! WTF? LJ needs more "features" that desperately? It's already the most successful blogging tool out there. Somebody's just trying to cash in on that now, is my thought here. I swear, if LJ turns into some kind of MySpace clone, I'm jumping ship to somewhere else! If I (or a good friend of mine, *waves to TW*) have paid money for my account, I shouldn't have to also view ads! Ads support free stuff, and are the price you pay for not paying money. Ads should not be inflicted on those who are already supporting the system through other means! Eesh. If LJ is going to have "features" that require one to view ads, paid account or not, I don't care how much they say we won't be forced to use them, the mere thought of such a setup is annoying in the extreme!

And going out and looking for corporate content? Ew! Corporations can make ljs and communities already, why should they then get special ones just for them, plastered with ads that other users cannot avoid? Heck, I have a corporate lj friended, I don't mind that, but I do NOT want to see the kind of annoying spam that's all over half the websites I visit, and constantly attacking my forum, and enternally in my inbox, start turning up on my livejournal! I'd have to make it friends only again, just to avoid spam comments, and for all I know LJ will come out with some "feature" that gives corprate ljs the priviledge of commenting anyhow.

*deep breath* Okay, it's probably not going to ever get that bad, but this is the second step in a direction I don't like. (The "plus" accounts with extra ads in being the first.) And as this guy points out, will the TOS change for corporate sponsors? What about censorship? It's not a very big step from encouraging official communities to banning unnofficial ones, after all...

Comments

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. If you don't like these features and don't want to see the ads, why not just not join these communities/features?

(Facebook did this months ago and most people didn't notice. Apple started giving away songs to people in its group and lots of people joined but then left as soon as there were no more songs. Yes we were all advertised to and needed to download iTunes to use the free songs, but so? It's not like Apple got access to our e-mail addresses.)

I actually think it's an ingenious advertising model on their part and it really doesn't hurt the consumer. It's not push advertising, it's pull (you actually have to go there to see the ads and in return you need to incentivized to do so) and that's a huge difference. I'm all for pull advertising, it's no different from people giving out freebies at job fairs or cons.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

In and of itself I wouldn't mind it. However- 1. LJ has not responded to ANY of the concerns raised by the nine pages of negative comments there. And 2. NINE PAGES of negative comments. Nobody likes this, and they appear to be going ahead with it anyhow.

It's an attitude I dislike, and if this is successful, what next? LJ and IRC are the only two places on the entirely of the internet where I do not have to tune out, delete, and attempt to filter spam. And what's to say that these corporations, once they have this priviledge in, aren't going to abuse the priviledge and go pushing their own advertising at us themselves?

[nsdragon.livejournal.com]

Whoa. Less than 24 hours after the post was made?

They'll respond alright, but in another newspost. I don't think they'll be replying to each and every one of those nine pages of comments individually.

But there already is advertising in LJ. They're the plus accounts. They're free, and get a small subset of the features of paid accounts, in exchange for a few ads. I have a few friends with plus accounts, and I've yet to see any ads at all.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. If you don't have a plus account, you don't get ads. But this announcement specifically says that even those with paid accounts will see the ads for their "sponsors."

It's a step. Plus accounts were step one, this sponsorship thing is step two. What's step three going to be? And step four?

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Actually, it says that if you use the sponsored features you will have to acknowledge the sponsors, even if you are a paid account holder.

[euphoriel.livejournal.com]

Plus accounts are also the default option selected when people make new LJ accounts. Most people I have directed towards LJ recently, if I didn't set their account up for them with them sitting there, they think that's how it HAS to be.

[kyoshyu.livejournal.com]

...this whole deal is so full of lame it hurts.