Official Communities showing ads

[foxfirefey]

Some official communities are starting to show ads. Current official communities showing ads include:

lj_spotlight
lj_maintenance
tipoftheday
feedback

And now news, just in time for State of the Goat.

No comments yet from staff, but it has only been a short while since the comments were made, so it's possible one might be forthcoming. (Although, of course, there's no obligation to give one,

Comments

[matgb]

Ouch. I really don't like the way the whole thing truncates to the left and leaves a massive column of white all the way down the right hand side.

It's been ages since I looked around logged out.

Still, if it helps pay for the wages of whoever is trying to fix the server response errors that have had me hit refresh FIVE TIMES in order to get the reply page open...

[foxfirefey]

I'm getting near constant "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading." for some reason, but my internet has been pretty wanky of late, due to last night's power outage.

[matgb]

No, I'm getting them constantly as well. Initially I thought my dial up, but it's only for LJ :-(

[foxfirefey]

Aha--We're experiencing some residual effects of a partial outage which ocurred earlier today. We are working to fix it and will update status when issue is resolved.

Man, they've not been having good luck with power lately.

[ex_zarathus122]

State of the Goat: Bad.

[ex_shattered767]

I emailed feedback@ a little over 4 hours ago to ask why this change was made, since I haven't seen a single staff member address it (cynical me, but I'm not surprised). I'll post the response here, when I get it.

[foxfirefey]

It's a pretty recent change and there's probably tons to get done, so.

[ex_shattered767]

All the more reason that something maybe should have been said, you know, in that new fancy newspost outlining upcoming changes. ;)

[ex_shattered767]

My ticket:

"I'm just gonna come right out with it: why have ads been put on official communities like News? While I understand that it's about money, obviously, I think that putting them on News, Feedback, and LJ_Maintenance is overstepping it."

Response, as of 1 hour ago:

"Ads were turned on in these communities at the request of senior LiveJournal management.

"Thank you for letting us know that you feel this is overstepping bounds. We've made a note of the feedback you've provided."

[tallblue]

Such a shame it had to come to this.

[foxfirefey]

I dunno, I'm pretty sure most anti-ad folk were expecting it at some point. Putting ads on official communities is low hanging fruit.

Higher hanging fruit, but still within the range of possibilities, is mobile web advertising and ads in RSS and ATOM feeds.

[halfawake]

I'm not sure if they can legally put advertisements in RSS/ATOM feeds since technically they're coming from other sites and therefore, the copyright owners of those sites probably wouldn't be happy with LiveJournal making money off their own site. Unless said other site is a site like TypePad, which SixApart also owns, in which case they could probably do it.

[foxfirefey]

Oh, no--not syndicated accounts.

Plus accounts have RSS/ATOM feeds that could have ads in them. Of course, only LJ knows if enough people even watch those suckers to make it worth the trouble.

[ex_uniquewo]

Before I forget to mention this:

http://community.livejournal.com/changelog/4300801.html

"SUP will also be handling advertising to people in the ex-USSR regions." I think we already knew that but...

[foxfirefey]

Hrm. It's more and more apparent that the deal with SUP isn't really opt outable, at all.

The static files are not escapable and neither is being served advertising from them.