It's finally happened...
I remember last year when LJ was bought by Six Apart, all the oldbies who had been designing and running LJ from the beginning swore up and down that this would not introduce some new commercial element to the mix. A lot of us were worried about this exact thing happening. As a matter of fact, in the early days (2001) when I first started my journal I was preaching the gospel of LJ to anyone who was interested and the biggest point I always made was: "It's a free, high-quality service, and you're never confronted with banner ads or the other commercial annoyances you normally encounter on other free services." I very specifically recommended it based on the fact that there were no banner ads. They made all their money by offering more features to paid accounts and that seemed to work rather well. But today...
*sigh*
Today, on the main page, they're finally announcing a new kind of account- a "sponsored" account. It means you get the features of a paid account without paying as long as you are willing to display ads in your journal. Yeah yeah, I know...capitalism...TNSTAAFL...market pressures...etc. I really don't care. This is a sad day for LiveJournal.
I'm biased though. I only rode the freebie wagon for the first year I was here and I have been a paying customer ever since. My only hope is that this sponsored account feature won't be as popular as I fear it will be.
_Phaedrus_
*sigh*
Today, on the main page, they're finally announcing a new kind of account- a "sponsored" account. It means you get the features of a paid account without paying as long as you are willing to display ads in your journal. Yeah yeah, I know...capitalism...TNSTAAFL...market pressures...etc. I really don't care. This is a sad day for LiveJournal.
I'm biased though. I only rode the freebie wagon for the first year I was here and I have been a paying customer ever since. My only hope is that this sponsored account feature won't be as popular as I fear it will be.
_Phaedrus_