SixApart breaks pledge, adopts ads.

[insomnia]

So, have you seen the news yet? Sure, it's spun nicely enough, but I ask a bit of your time to consider the following:

Anyone remember this promise LiveJournal made to you back in Apr. 2004?!
We stand firm in saying that we will:

Stay advertisement free
It may be because it's one of our biggest pet peeves, or it may be because they don't

Comments

[insomnia]

Absolutely. Please link to it or copy it outright, and encourage others to do so as well.

[sasuko]

I'll do the same if the offer holds for me as well?

[flyswatter]

I am going to link to it as well.

[john_of_ny]

How do you REALLY feel?

[paul]

I agree wholeheartedly with you (for a change!) Mark.

One thing that would be useful would be a short and to the point statement explaining why we don't support ads. So that if people are defriended they understand why.

I doubt most people would bother reading this post, no offence to you as the people who are on your friends list most likely will, but something shorter for the people on our friends list would be very useful as an explanation of action.

[insomnia]

I agree that we need a simple message and a popular campaign to really raise this issue. That said, I think it's important to flesh out a lot of the detailed arguments too, as both have their place.

To me, the longterm, stable profitability of LiveJournal is a serious issue. I see a lot of VC money going into SixApart, and a rapidly growing staff (gotta be over 100 employees by now), but no financial data coming out indicating that it can support those numbers, except through additional rounds of VC funding, much less support that level of growth.

Either way, the amount of money made on contextual ads for, say, 100,000 users (which, btw, would be very optimistic) is really not much to get excited about. Growth for the site of total users might be high, but growth of active LiveJournal users is not looking good at all, really.

1153683 posting in the last 30 days back in June 2004, 1512152 posting in the last 30 days back in March 2005, and 1301145 todayTruth is, LiveJournal isn't growing anymore. It might have more accounts, but

[paul]

Interesting, I've always figured the posting rates were going down, it has been visible on a small scale simply through my friends page.

Another thing to consider, though I don't know if it would be applicable would be the loss of paid user income through this new level. In your opinion do you think many people who currently pay but are maybe not sure about it in the future would drop down to sponsored?

Hell with the shortened URLs now for everyone, a perfectly adequate 1gb of photo space (who is really going to use 2??) and the ability to post polls, it is certainly rather tempting. I'm not entirely sure myself what my $25 a year is getting me above all that. If such is the case though it could be damaging as it is unlikely each sponsored user would generate $25 a year of page through clicks from the adverts, hence they'd be looking at a drop in real money from Paid Users...

[insomnia]

"In your opinion do you think many people who currently pay but are maybe not sure about it in the future would drop down to sponsored?"

It could be a popular alternative, esp. if the economy looks gloomier. The rewards are similar enough for most users.

[hikari_ko]

My friend pointed the news out to me yesterday, and my first thought honestly was that I needed to see your take on it (although I already knew your stance).

I know, at least, my friends won't be doing, mostly since only two are active users, and only one of them would even care about the features, and not enough to allow ads.

The next thing I thought was that this could turn into MySpace, and that site is very very ugly. I'll definately send an e-mail or two expressing my disgust at this decision

[paul]

Ultimately, the exposure to ads are BY CHOICE up to the folks in your friends list

As I understand it not entirely, anyone who views the site that isn't logged in at the time will see the adverts. There isn't much they can do to stop that but if they wanted it to be entirely opt-in then ads should only be shown on the pages of sponsored users and only such users could see them.

Because of this people who choose not to be exposed to ads will have to become a paid user. Hence it is really a tariff on avoiding adverts. A betrayal on both parts I'd say.