New Development: Sponsored Features

[foxfirefey]

There is a new post in lj_biz talking about Sponsored Features and Sponsored CommunitiesThe first sponsored feature will be SMS integration with LiveJournal. Paid users will see the sponsorship while using the feature. It is "not consider[ed] to be advertising", so I guess that's the rationale for still satisfying the "Paid members will never see any

Comments

[ex_uniquewo]

I will not curse. I will not curse.

Is there anybody here who believes that
a) basic accounts will remain ad-free?
b) paid accounts will remain ad-free?
c) the homepage will remain ad-free?

[foxfirefey]

Er, well, considering that Basic accounts get to see Sponsored communites featured on the front page and see ads whenever they visit their Plus friends, and that the featuring of Sponsored communities on the front page to logged out is in its own way an ad...

...no?

[schnee]

a) Not me.
b) Not me.
c) Not me...

[kula]

Oh lord. When was the last time LJ implemented something I was interested in? And now I get crap I don't want AND ads to go with it.

[ex_uniquewo]

You know what? This is confusing.

OTOH she says: "paid users are going to see the (unobtrusive!) sponsorship information on pages about sponsored features."

OTOH she says: "Both of them are completely optional. You don't have to use sponsored features, and you don't have to join sponsored communities."

So are we going to see ads on pages talking about sponsored features. As in ads on the site.
Or are we going to see ads only while using this feature.

My understanding is that we're going to see both.

[foxfirefey]

I'm hoping the sponsorship will be a byline somewhere at the bottom. I would agree that to be decently unobtrusive. Not that I really like the whole idea--kinda gives me the heeby jeebies, you know?

I think both--ads on the site pages that implement that feature. And not so much ads as sponsorship logos. Like I mentioned in the lj_biz post, I'm really hoping this doesn't involve any third parties setting their damn tracking cookies.

[tooner]

The term "slippery slope" shows up a lot in those comments.

A by-line of text "brought to you by crAmp'd Mobile"
becomes
a by-line of text with a small logo GIF
becomes
a larger logo GIF
becomes
a Flash logo
becomes
a Flash logo with sound
becomes
a direct neural interface to the purchasing cortex of your brain.

[foxfirefey]

Like I mentioned in another comment here, one could call the embedding of Flash videos from YouTube a sponsored feature. It's a feature made possible technically by the existence of YouTube, and YouTube gets mentioning from it.

People did complain about the embedding of Flash videos, but it was based on other concerns than sponsoring and advertising, like this post has kicked up.

If the "sponsorship" of new technical features is like the YouTube implementation, I honestly can't say I have too much problem with it, given that the sponsoring is technical over financial.

I do agree to the slippery slope to some extent--for instance, see the changing ad guidelines post below.

[shamess_the_elf]

[ex_shattered767]

I think that any pros no longer mattered to me when my viewing options stopped staying on XColibur yesterday after 2 weeks of no problems; I've been switched to Horizon 4 times now.

[soph]

If you use the LJLogin extension, that's been known to happen. In my experience, the latest version doesn't seem to do it, but then I only started using it after the switch.

[ex_shattered767]

I've heard that excuse. Except:

1) As I said, it's worked fine for the last 2 weeks, and I haven't changed anything;
2) This hasn't happened on any of my secondary accounts, only my primary account, and I had switched accounts via LJLogin to change their viewing options;
3) I've been logging into the site via the homepage and changing my LJLogin settings and it's still screwing up.

Sometimes my viewing options show nothing is selected. Sometimes Horizon is selected. There's no logic to it.

And 1.2.0 is the latest version, correct? That's what I've had all along.

[schnee]

Regarding the gateway: I'm not sure how it works, either, but I've seen other people use it. :)