"Sponsorship is different from ads" therefore Paid users will see it

[ex_uniquewo]

In September 2006, brad was saying : sponsored "whatever" are ads. don't worry, we (at least most of us?) realize sponsorships are the same as ads. and we remember which account levels see ads and which don't. Paid users won't see sponsored stuff -- ignore the previous post. paid users won't ever see ads. that's why you paid, and we're not in the

Comments

[janinedog]

I'm curious, since this was brought up when sponsored themes first went live with Havaianas...how would you suggest that Paid users be opt-ed out from sponsored themes? There really isn't a good solution for that that we've come up with, because making a user's style look different to some users isn't a good idea for the owner of the journal (who more than likely wants people to see their journal as they set it).

Same with the mood themes. Should we really be changing the way users' preferences show to different viewers? I don't think so. I think we all know that many LJ users are very sensitive about how their journals look (remember when the navigation strip went live?).

So, I really am curious...what's your proposed solution? How can we not display sponsored journal settings (like styles and mood themes) to some users while still respecting the settings of the journal owner?

[ex_uniquewo]

How can we not display sponsored journal settings (like styles and mood themes) to some users while still respecting the settings of the journal owner?

You cannot. That's that simple, which is why I guess I was told that sponsored content was not considered as advertising. It made showing it to Paid and Permanent users perfectly ok.

As I said, LJ is very clever. Sponsored content is presented as being über cool and something that all users would like to use and why prevent Paid and Permanent users from using and seeing this über cool content?

[opalexian]

WTF is with this trend in the last couple years of manipulating words so that their negative/undesired connotations just magically disappear. If a company wants to sponsor LJ with their money, that is one thing; however, if they want some kind of AD SPACE in return, then they will get AD SPACE. 'Sponsored' content on LJ contain ADS-saying it doesn't doesn't make that true. Support is getting pretty slimey by following this hideous trend.

(Before you know it people will be trying to pay off Webster's to get dictionary entries changed.) >: (

[ex_uniquewo]

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a generic non-branded version of the layout and the theme if I was given the option to do so. How is it different from using ?style=mine?

[janinedog]

?style=mine is a deliberate action, and isn't automatic (except in comment links from your friends page, if you turn on that option). By automatically showing something different to some users, the viewer may not even know that the journal doesn't look how the owner intended it to look. And at least if it's in your own style, you're very aware that you're not viewing the style the owner chose.

I thought about the non-branded version of the layout, but that may not work for future themes. They may not all be random graphics with a little logo on the side, like Havaianas and Diet Pepsi. What if the whole style/header is branded or about the product? Would everything just be gray or something? Then it ceases to be anything like the style the user chose.

[ex_uniquewo]

As I said, Elwreck and I both suggested making this an option that Paid and Permanent users would check/uncheck. It was even suggested to make Sponsored Content visible by default. So this would be a very deliberate action and not something that would be automatic.

Again, as I said, I wouldn't mind seeing a generic non-branded version of the style and the mood theme. If the style is Expressive, show me the default theme for Expressive. That would be something I had chosen to see and a choice I would be perfectly aware of.

[xb95]

brad is no longer actively working on LJ and hasn't been for a year or more. Bringing him up as some sort of holy grail of accountability is just like pointing at the founding fathers of the US and saying "but look what they said!" The powers that be at 6A don't really care anymore. The grace period of paying homage to "well, this was the site Brad started" has long since passed.

I respect your point of view and agree with you on this issue - every time I see something "Sponsored" on LJ it makes me wince. To think that this site, once actually one of the few places you could go online to find principles and people who believed in them, has now decayed to what it is... it bothers me.

Well, as has been proven over and over again in the real world: MySpaces succeed. Wal-Mart wins out over Mom 'n Pop's Local Shoppe. That's how things are nowadays.

Props to you for continuing the fight, though...

[ex_uniquewo]

Well I could have phrased it so that it was more about what was LJ's policy months ago, and not who said what. Of course, I won't pretend that the fact that it was brad who said it - and in the circumstances he said it - didn't mean anything. It was obvious at the time that there was some sort of disagreement and that, once brad had left, things may change. And they have, we all know that and have known it for months. Documenting these changes is a pretty sad job at times.

Thank you for your comment. I know how useless it is on a whole but if I can make a few people change their minds about giving LJ money, it'd be better than nothing, I guess.

[serenadesha]

I think the problem many users - myself included - is that when SixApart bought LJ, they promised to stick to those standards and that included not having advertising. It was one of the things that made the transit go over well with LJ users, and now that statement is being ignored. So this isn't even just calling back to the "memory of Brad," it's pointing back to the company that's still in charge and saying, "Hey, you promised."

[herongale]

What do you mean, "respect the settings of the journal owner?" We've always been allowed work-arounds that allow us to see almost all LJ content in our own style... aka, our friends page views, the fact that we can add style=mine to links and view individual entries other people make in our own style, the fact that we can block images from loading on our friends page, and other little things.

I can respect that if I went to someone's journal and browsed it under their own settings, I should see what they want me to see. But if I'm viewing my own friend's list I want it to be customizable enough so that I don't have to view sponsored mood themes. I suppose I could just block all mood themes altogether... but I'd rather not. However, the very fact that I CAN block mood themes and styles from my own friends page, indicates that the "respecting the settings of the journal owner" argument is a completely irrelevant point.

[janinedog]

You can set all mood themes on your friends page to be your own mood theme. It's similar to the option to make all comment links on your friends page link to ?style=mine.

Your friends page is part of your own journal, so the layouts/themes of your friends don't have to be respected. The content posted there is your friends', yes, but all you see is what they typed in their entry. It's not their entire journal.

Mood themes are a whole-journal setting, not a per-entry one. The mood chosen is per-entry, but the icon that appears with it is defined for the user's entire journal. So you can't block/change what mood the user chose (unless you modify your style to not show moods, of course), but you can change what mood theme appears next to it when viewing your friends page.

[ex_uniquewo]

So you can't block/change what mood the user chose (unless you modify your style to not show moods, of course), but you can change what mood theme appears next to it when viewing your friends page.

What do you mean here? Just that "You can set all mood themes on your friends page to be your own mood theme." or something else? Are you talking about what we can do now or what is technically feasible?

[janinedog]

Yeah, I mean that you can set all of the mood themes on your friends page to be your own mood theme (what we can do now).

Easily Feasible

[zorkfox]

Technically feasible: Have two sets of images for the mood themes, one that is just the bubble faces, and one that is bubble faces and Pepsi logo. If the user being served the image is paid, he sees the first theme; if not, the second. If the user of the mood theme is paid, his journal displays the non-logo theme no matter the type of user viewing it. If the user of the mood theme is not paid, it displays the logo version to non-paid users.

It's all flow control. A couple of if-statements. Nothing painful, I would think.

Re: Easily Feasible

[ex_uniquewo]

Especially since it seems to me they're already doing it for other stuff - Sponsored styles maybe even. IMO, if LJ really wanted to keep their promise, they would have found solutions - such as yours - to keep it. My take on the situation is that they didn't really think that people would object or that only a few would so it didn't matter either way.

Re: Easily Feasible

[foxfirefey]

That's not going to work with all possible future mood themes, which might have the logo embedded straight into them. I'd suggest this.