Why is Livejournal more expensive to run than Blogspot?
Hello all,
I was wondering if someone could answer this question I have. How much does it cost to run Livejournal -- or rather, why does it seem more costly to run than Blogspot?
I've been looking at some of the past entries and the community's memories, but I don't see anything closely related. I know that there are some people here who work or have worked with Livejournal before, so I was hoping that they can answer my question. And I am genuinely curious -- I'm not being snarky or snide or anything.
Blogspot does not utilize advertising, but it is probably the most widely used blogging platform around. While there are plenty of Blogspot sites that splatter their blog with ads, the profits of those ads do not go to Blogspot (to my understanding), they go to the owner of the blog. From a purely layman's perspective, it makes little sense why Blogspot, which has more 'freeloaders' on it, be able to function without reliance on ads, and other blogging / networking sites like Multiply and recently, Livejournal, do.
In the case of Livejournal, most of the material posted on it are text-based, there is some allocation for graphics, so in general a single user can't really take up that much server space. Many users pay for their accounts -- presumably, the amount that they pay covers up the cost of those who use it for free. A lot of Livejournal runs on volunteer energy. Blogspot accounts tend to be quite graphic heavy and is fully supported by a salaried staff.
(From an avaricious user's perspective: if it comes to a point when all Basic Accounts will be splattered with ads, I would consider it a rip off; there is no reason why I ought to be forced to look at ads when the money doesn't end up with me, when I can put ads easily on another service and have money come back to me)
So -- and I am genuinely curious -- as to why people at the higher ups believe that Livejournal need to function on advertising in order to be profitable, or even necessary for its survival. Does the Livejournal code itself take up a lot of server space? I know that Insanejournal has problems with coding recently that caused the server to break down. Does Blogspot / Blogger have some additional form of revenue coming in from its partnership with Google?
If there is anyone who can give me an answer for this, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.