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]

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 today.

Truth is, LiveJournal isn't growing anymore. It might have more accounts, but account numbers don't matter. Pageviews do, which actually correspond more closely with regular, active users.

So, if LiveJournal isn't going to make Six Apart profitable, what is? They're trying to roll out "business class" (read: expensive, overpriced) weblogging tools, but how much money is there really in that market? Why not go with some existing business tool that's tried and true, which adds a bit of "blogginess" to their software?

I heard rumors that Six Apart doubled their revenue in just one year, but that doesn't mean much when they've quadrupled their staff, and considering where they were starting from. 2 x not much = still not much.

The question is, did Brad hitch his wagon to a star, or to a dead horse?

[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.