For those of you who have not seen ljspeaks

[foxfirefey]

A post has been made about an article has been made on the recent Basic discontinuation by thies (post deleted by user). The article is here.

Comments

[smeddley]

Trying to look on the bright side, there is one other way (besides being more intrusive) that advertisers can fight back - pay-per-click, vs. pay-per-view. There are plenty of sites that have made that shift, and other blogging sites (I know Blogger has it as an option) the 'owner' of the blog is the one who gets compensaion for the clicks.

I think advertisers are starting to wake up and realize that with so many people using adblock and people getting immune to seeing ads even if they don't, they're squandering a lot of money.

At least, I can hope.

[foxfirefey]

Blogger's owned by Google, which means that they're able to offer that kind of an arrangement much more easily. If it was a third party like LJ trying to do that, they cost of the click would be spread three ways--to the ad company, to the blog company, and to the blogger--which might just make it not worthwhile to do anymore for the blog company.

A lot of the banner ads on LJ are already PPC. So, the intrusiveness is also supposed to up the PPC rate.

[smeddley]

I think I'm suddenly depressed by the number of people who click on those things... at least none of the ones I've seen have warranted a click. :/ Then again, it seems every group I get has either a questionable drug deal, a lose weight fast plan, or a financial scam in it.

[foxfirefey]

Tada!

[pyrop]

I think there's a reason that the SUP management misunderstands LJ. The Russian side and English side of LJ have completely different dynamics. In soviet Russia, LJ is the dominant blogging platform; it is not in the english-speaking world. Russian-language journals operate more often in broadcast mode (a single person speaking to many others) than English-language journals.

I think SUP's assuming the English side operates like the Russian side. And getting rid of basic accounts may make sense if everyone operates like the Russian side, but that's not true. (Or maybe they're trying to kill off the English side, but let's not go into conspiracy theories just yet.)

[foxfirefey]

Well, a loud number of Russian users did not want to go under SUP management, and would have opted out if given the choice like they were promised but didn't get.

It's not as if SUP doesn't have those advisory board members to talk about the differences in culture between the sides.

[magickaldreamer]

I am very uneasy about the comment regarding Paid accounts. If the price rises, or if they start putting ads on Paid journals, or if (and I doubt this will happen) they get rid of Paid accounts completely, I'm leaving.

[foxfirefey]

It may sound worse than it actually is--tone may not have translated fully, and making $25 per user by ads alone is not easy.

[magickaldreamer]

That is true, especially on LiveJournal, where there are so many users. However, I do not see it outside the realm of possibility that LiveJournal/SUP may raise the prices of Paid accounts if they find that ads are less effective (what with the spread of ad blockers like AdBlock Plus) at giving them revenue.

[foxfirefey]

Any raise in prices would need to be balanced against the number of people who would stop paying if the price was raised.

[merig00]

heh... I'm just waiting for Mr. Dolboeb to post one of his customer service pearls in english so that english LJ-base would rip him a new one instead of just a bunch of russian users.

[foxfirefey]

Bah! A bank manager wouldn't translate his sayings, why should he! ::wink::

[merig00]

hehe...did you see the link to dolboeb post? try to babelfish it. at least the last several comments between dolboeb and me.

[foxfirefey]

Unfortunately, babelfish only gives the most confusing and distorting threads of the conversation that actually took place.

[hdofu]

If my permanent account starts getting ads I will get nasty.