Sponsored Userpics

[foxfirefey]

Title
Sponsored Userpics

Short, concise description of the idea
Users should get extra userpics if they allow ads to be placed on those userpics.

Full description of the idea
This suggestion is a compromise of this suggestion for unlimited userpics for all users. Lots of users want more LJ features, the topmost want being more userpics, yet many

Comments

[mskala]

What if instead, the advertiser gets the *whole* userpic, and it's just that you can add sponsored userpics to your account and use them without it counting towards your limit? If the advertiser wants people to use it then they'll have to make it be a picture that people actually want to have, which will keep a tight lid on how obnoxious the advertising can be; caching issues are much reduced because there are only so many sponsored userpics across the whole site instead of many per user; and meanwhile users get unlimited userpics as long as they're content to use the sponsored ones.

Although the original suggestion of course wasn't serious, I think yet another fatal flaw in it from the advertiser's point of view would be that they don't control what else is shown in the picture - so I could write "sucks, don't buy it," or make some kind of clever social commentary, in the user-controlled space and Pepsi wouldn't be so happy to have their logo appear next to that.

[mskala]

In order to be popular, I think there would have to be a large selection of sponsored userpics - nobody will want to use the Pepsi userpic if it's the same one everybody else has, but they might choose their favourite of the Pepsi userpics if there are 100 to choose from. So the pricing on this offered to the advertisers would have to allow for and encourage advertisers creating a large number of different sponsored userpics. Maybe sell them in blocks instead of one at a time.

[pne]

Ooh, good point.

[tiferet]

...Twilight fandom, like other fandoms, rolls its own.