A couple things of note!
Event A: Sponsored accounts are live for Cyrillic services. Additionally, people can use the Viewing Options settings to opt into Cyrillic services, which means that English users can also use Sponsored accounts if they so choose.
The three current available sponsors are Intel (intel_sp), MTC (mts_sp) and Peugeot (peugeot_sp). Possible future sponsors: alfabank_sp, miller_sp and pepsi_sp. ( Source at the_lj_herald.)
Changing to Cyrillic services leaves pretty much all of your interface in English, but all the ads change to Cyrillic language ads. It's interesting to note that many of the ads contain LJ's logo. Instead of "Home" in the menu, there is a "Main" drop down menu that gives you access to the Cyrillic services pages such as Bazaar (an integration with some sort of classifieds listing service), Themes (no clue), Photo, Ratings, Communities, Celebrities, and My stats.
You can see an example sponsored account at sponsortester. There is a small description page on sponsored accounts here. There seem to be a limited number of sponsored accounts available for any given sponsor, which makes sense. Making your account sponsored automatically makes you a member of the sponsor's community although it does not automatically make you friend it (probably a wise choice). It allows you to leave, but if you do so, you seem to not be able to rejoin unless you cancel your sponsorship and resign up. You start out with a trial that you can cancel. Your profile has one box ad on it and mentions its sponsorship.
I'm curious to see whether this test account remains sponsored. A weakness in this model seems to be that not all LJ accounts are equal in terms of exposure; a sponsor will want as many higher profile LJs as it can get, yet I'm taking up a valuable slot with a worthless new account I just created and have no intention of really using. A better sponsored system for advertiser value would probably allow LJs that have more traffic to apply and boot off lower trafficked LJs.
Event B: synecdochic announces the launch of Dreamwidth Studios, which is going to be a technical and social fork of the LJ userbase--not a clone. Dreamwidth is going to take the current open source LJ code and start doing some very nice development on it to modernize, update, and enhance the system. Additionally, they're going to make a service as well that's focused on the community; part of this focus will include no third party advertisements:We won't accept or display third-party advertising on our service, whether text ads or banner ads. Not only are we personally and ideologically against displaying advertising on a community-based service, due to the fact that it dilutes the community experience and changes the focus from 'pleasing the userbase' to 'pleasing the advertisers', the simple fact is that advertising on social networks flat-out does not make money. [Editorial note: surprisingly and perhaps depressingly true; for instance, neither FaceBook or MySpace so far have made much profit from their advertising, and certainly not enough to justify the amount of investment made in them.]
By 'third-party advertising', we mean anything where a company pays us to show their banners, graphics, or text ad to our users. It's possible that someday we might allow our users to advertise to each other -- letting people know about their craft business, for instance, or implementing a user-to-user 'classified ads' service. If we do that, it will be kept in a separate area of the site, and you'll have to specifically go looking for it. We won't force it upon you.
It's also possible that we might make partnerships with other sites in order to add features that we don't have the resources to add ourselves. If we do that, it won't be for our profit, and it won't be a sponsorship deal. It'll be to add features our users have specifically asked for.
It all sounds very, very sexy, and the people behind it have veritable loads of experience in LJ coding and LJ management. Certainly something to keep an eye out for.
The three current available sponsors are Intel (intel_sp), MTC (mts_sp) and Peugeot (peugeot_sp). Possible future sponsors: alfabank_sp, miller_sp and pepsi_sp. ( Source at the_lj_herald.)
Changing to Cyrillic services leaves pretty much all of your interface in English, but all the ads change to Cyrillic language ads. It's interesting to note that many of the ads contain LJ's logo. Instead of "Home" in the menu, there is a "Main" drop down menu that gives you access to the Cyrillic services pages such as Bazaar (an integration with some sort of classifieds listing service), Themes (no clue), Photo, Ratings, Communities, Celebrities, and My stats.
You can see an example sponsored account at sponsortester. There is a small description page on sponsored accounts here. There seem to be a limited number of sponsored accounts available for any given sponsor, which makes sense. Making your account sponsored automatically makes you a member of the sponsor's community although it does not automatically make you friend it (probably a wise choice). It allows you to leave, but if you do so, you seem to not be able to rejoin unless you cancel your sponsorship and resign up. You start out with a trial that you can cancel. Your profile has one box ad on it and mentions its sponsorship.
I'm curious to see whether this test account remains sponsored. A weakness in this model seems to be that not all LJ accounts are equal in terms of exposure; a sponsor will want as many higher profile LJs as it can get, yet I'm taking up a valuable slot with a worthless new account I just created and have no intention of really using. A better sponsored system for advertiser value would probably allow LJs that have more traffic to apply and boot off lower trafficked LJs.
Event B: synecdochic announces the launch of Dreamwidth Studios, which is going to be a technical and social fork of the LJ userbase--not a clone. Dreamwidth is going to take the current open source LJ code and start doing some very nice development on it to modernize, update, and enhance the system. Additionally, they're going to make a service as well that's focused on the community; part of this focus will include no third party advertisements:We won't accept or display third-party advertising on our service, whether text ads or banner ads. Not only are we personally and ideologically against displaying advertising on a community-based service, due to the fact that it dilutes the community experience and changes the focus from 'pleasing the userbase' to 'pleasing the advertisers', the simple fact is that advertising on social networks flat-out does not make money. [Editorial note: surprisingly and perhaps depressingly true; for instance, neither FaceBook or MySpace so far have made much profit from their advertising, and certainly not enough to justify the amount of investment made in them.]
By 'third-party advertising', we mean anything where a company pays us to show their banners, graphics, or text ad to our users. It's possible that someday we might allow our users to advertise to each other -- letting people know about their craft business, for instance, or implementing a user-to-user 'classified ads' service. If we do that, it will be kept in a separate area of the site, and you'll have to specifically go looking for it. We won't force it upon you.
It's also possible that we might make partnerships with other sites in order to add features that we don't have the resources to add ourselves. If we do that, it won't be for our profit, and it won't be a sponsorship deal. It'll be to add features our users have specifically asked for.
It all sounds very, very sexy, and the people behind it have veritable loads of experience in LJ coding and LJ management. Certainly something to keep an eye out for.