Oh look. LJ's at it again.
Mar. 13th, 2008 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In the interest of doing the community thing and spreading the word - it is no longer possible to create a new Basic (free and ad-free) account on Livejournal. Existing Basic accounts remain ad-free, existing Plus accounts can be degraded to ad-free Basic.
I can't say I haven't been expecting this. LJ remained one of the very, very few places online that offered something both free and ad-free.
I've been around for more than a decade, and I remember when this happened to webspace. I migrated from Geocities (free to banner to popup) to Fortunecities (free to gigantic banner) to the space I was getting with my ISP (limited) to paying for my own domain and has it really been six years? It's a natural progression of the online evolution: at first it's free. Then it's ads. Then you realise that if you don't like ads and you use a service frequently, paying for it is quite an attractive option.
I use LJ daily as my main source of internet-community news and my main path of communication with many dear friends. Out of the clones, it's the most stable and the one with the most attractive array of options and layouts. I've had a paid account for years now, and each year I reconsider signing up for one more year, just like I reconsider the value-for-money of any other subscription. (I'm dropping Usenet this year, for example. It's time.) So far, I still see benefits.
In other news, you can create an ad-free community, still, which was the one thing I was worried about.
I can't say I haven't been expecting this. LJ remained one of the very, very few places online that offered something both free and ad-free.
I've been around for more than a decade, and I remember when this happened to webspace. I migrated from Geocities (free to banner to popup) to Fortunecities (free to gigantic banner) to the space I was getting with my ISP (limited) to paying for my own domain and has it really been six years? It's a natural progression of the online evolution: at first it's free. Then it's ads. Then you realise that if you don't like ads and you use a service frequently, paying for it is quite an attractive option.
I use LJ daily as my main source of internet-community news and my main path of communication with many dear friends. Out of the clones, it's the most stable and the one with the most attractive array of options and layouts. I've had a paid account for years now, and each year I reconsider signing up for one more year, just like I reconsider the value-for-money of any other subscription. (I'm dropping Usenet this year, for example. It's time.) So far, I still see benefits.
In other news, you can create an ad-free community, still, which was the one thing I was worried about.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 08:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 09:06 am (UTC)The only people affected are those signing up for *new* accounts.
This is not "backstabbing your user base" - it's varying the terms for *new* accounts (not existing ones).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 01:45 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong - it's not the fact that they did away with the Basic Accounts that bothers me. It's how they handled this issue that is entirely wrong.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 02:05 pm (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=38
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 02:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 09:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 09:07 am (UTC)It doesn't affect existing users. So they didn't tell the existing uesr base, so what? It doesn't affect them so why should they?
And if anyone is that concerned with a new account about seeing adverts, well, there are plenty of ad blockers out there that work just fine :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 09:38 am (UTC)This is especially important after the demise of GreatestJournal, where the journals and entry pages were ad-free (this service stopped being supported and degenerated significantly in December 2007). Many RPGs fled to InsaneJournal, but that service in its free option has entry pages that are a, extremely ugly, and b, ad-cluttered. As a result, RPG players are now faced with the options of dealing with ads, spending considerable money for each account, or investing in Adblock (this includes time spent to learn Firefox in many cases, installing Adblock on all computers they use, and putting up with ads when using public computers at work, school, college or library).
It does not affect me directly, since I plan to make my "real life" journal a non-LJ one, with a feed here. And fortunately the only RP I do lately is with
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 09:45 am (UTC)Maybe it should be suggested to LJ (by those who are bothered enough) that if you are a paid member and you launch a secondary journal (which you'd need to link to the main one and verify, else this wouldn't work) then it can be a "basic" one as you're already contributing to the LJ business?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 10:24 am (UTC)(And as for something-for-free, the problem is that to date, it was. Taking something away has a much more negative connotation than never giving it in the first place.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 11:28 am (UTC)There's a big big difference between "taking something away" and "letting you keep what you have but not giving anything else away for nothing"... and the LJ drama queens need to learn that *G*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 11:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-18 07:27 am (UTC)I've worked in various types of customer service most of my adult life. If a company treats its customers badly, they go elsewhere. And not only do they do that, the old PR principle of "tell two people, who tell two more people, etc., etc.," comes into play. The old adage of "the customer is always right" is something that LJ's new Russian owners need to pay attention to, also.
Basic Accounts were the gateway into LJ. Many Basic Users, seeing the perks of a Paid Account, converted. The Plus Account users get too many perks close to those of a Paid user, so why bother to convert? LJ is only shooting themselves in the foot on this one. They might save some money in the short-term, but they have lost a lot of money in the long-term. If they want more money right now, they need to back off the perks for a Plus user, or up the perks of a Paid user. That way, more users would convert to a Paid account.
And the trust was fragile, and is now even more broken. Who can promise that those Basic accounts will not be forcibly converted into Plus accounts?
Besides, there were links to various articles, one in Business Week, I beleive, that indicates that Web 2.0 is going the free route. When content providers such as the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal get rid of their paid content, that's a clue.
And the censorship on the interest search, of terms relating to fanfiction, mental health, and sexuality, was disrespectful to those interested in those areas. That filter has now been supposedly removed, but it was posted about in the changelog community, so it was not a "mistake" as one of the LJ staffers has tried to say, supposedly.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-18 07:52 am (UTC)once again we were not told in advance about the taking away of the Basic
Account creation that is really upsetting people.
Basically it all seems to be "Waaahh - you did something and didn't tell us, *even though* it only affect new user accounts and NOT our current accounts" which, to me, seems to be the behaviour of kindergarten children.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-18 10:16 pm (UTC)As for what you term the behaviour of kindergarten children, the fact remains that SUP promised to communicate with us, the content-providers. That they did after the fact is not communication. That's just closing the stable door after the horse gets out. It doesn't do any good.
I notice that you did not mention the problem of censorship in the interest searches. Supposedly that filter has now been turned off, but that it existed in the first place in the coding is certainly disrespectful and unhelpful to any LJ user who searched for information on fanfiction, sexuality, or mental health while the filter was in place.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-18 11:32 pm (UTC)And they promised to communicate with us about things that affect us - the new policy on new accounts does not affect existing accounts - I fail to see the issue - do people expect them to communicate *everything* that *doesn't* affect existing account holders as well? It wasn't part of the promise AFAIA, and where does such a policy as now being demanded stop - must they tell us if they change the decor of the office? Or if they decide to move to a different make of server? Or if they do a myriad of other things that do not affect existing users?
As for the "no guarantee" part - well, I don't hold much store in the "but they *might*" style of doom-mongering. If I had wings I might fly, but speculating on it won't make it so.
As is usual with this sort of fanwank, people have gone over the top and are just looking for excuses to take a pop, and all because they weren't told about something that didn't affect their accounts in the first place. People need to get some perspective.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 09:20 am (UTC)Not an ad fan myself, but I see no reason to contribute further to the wank, heh.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-13 09:39 am (UTC)