Logged in paid users seeing sponsored ads

[pandatini]

I just changed my journal's theme and saw this for the first time, and it really pissed me off. When paid users go to edit their journal's themes, there they are, right on the very first page, sponsored themes, AKA ADS. I know someone already posted about this here, but I come bearing screen caps, which I've posted behind the cut:

Comments

[theclamsman]

The Russians own LJ now. They really don't give a crap what the rest of the world thinks, or what longtime users think (or even what Brad thinks). They're out to make money on their "investment". It's worse than when 6Ahole was in control. Haven't seen the LJ news lately?

[pandatini]

I know, but I have a while until my paid time runs out, so I'd like to stay as ad free as possible til then.

[kirkemen]

Actually we Russians do "give a crap"... But there is a certain business model, labelled "business po-piterski" that has been adopted by some companies like SUP. The problem with Russians is that we as customers are not yet used to the "customer is always right" business model. Thus we rarely display an outrage at the sight of "business po-piterski" attitude. What I must say - "business po-piterski" is dying out despite the tolerance. The situation like the one with SUP is quite rare nowaday. Most our companies are very user-friendly (though yet clumsy at it sometimes).

[tallblue]

I agree! I am at the point of giving up.

[the_sweet]

As people have previously mentioned, there are some of us which have different definitions of "ads" and what LJ/SUP is allowed to do in regards to displaying sponsored/"advertising" content to us paid users

[pandatini]

They happen to have some sort of link back to the sponsor's site or whatnot, but how is that any different from taking a layout from a layouts community and having a link back to the original creator's journal or website?

Because with a link to a layout maker they just wants credit for what they made, they're not trying to SELL anything. Now in the sponsored themes, HP isn't trying to sell anything *directly* but they're trying to build up name recognition and positive associations with their brand, why? ... SO THEY CAN SELL MORE STUFF. No the sponsored themes are not as obtrusive as giant flashing popups that say "BUY OUR PRODUCT!" but they are STILL ADVERTISING. And I paid for my LJ account in large part because I DO NOT WANT to see advertising. Of ANY TYPE. NO matter how small or cool looking it is. And we were promised that paid users would NEVER have to see ANY ADS- because we had ALREADY PAID. Making paid users see ads is like making us pay TWICE. HELL NO.

Would you feel better having a Plus user telling you "I see themes that

[component]

I have to say that I agree with you on a lot of stuff :)

[pplfichi]

But all you are seeing is a small thumbnail preview of the theme with no advertising in it and the text clearly shows it to be sponsored. It's not as if you go to the customise page and your journal suddenly has ads put on it. Sure, you can pick the theme and get HP ads, but if you choose to do that it's up to you. This is no different to a theme made in a community where someone puts a link back to themselves. Both are looking for recognition of themselves. Just because one is a multinational company doesn't suddenly make brand recognition evil. This obviously doesn't take into accounts the doubleclick tracking, which is intrusive but can't directly be called advertising

[hematopoetic]

I think it went out the window with brad's statement, "THERE WILL NEVER BE ADS ON LJ" of yore.

[pandatini]

This is probably true.

It should be obvious we're fighting a losing fight, but I think many of us have made our homes here on LJ and we didn't want to have to give that up.

[elfwreck]

It'll take a lawsuit for fraud to get them to change. Paid & Perm users will have to file suit (maybe a class action suit) to point out that they were promised not seeing ads when logged in, and demanding a refund. Perm users should demand a full refund, not a prorated share based on a certain dollar value per year.

It's illegal to promise a service and then change the terms of the service. It's fraud to say "well, we offered you X, but now we're giving you X-1." Not even with the excuse, "we bought the service from someone else; we're changing the terms of the Paid accounts."

Nothing less than legal action is going to have any effect.

[pandatini]

That may be true, but even if it were to happen it would probably get bogged down for years in leagalese, and sadly I don't think enough paid users care about it to go through with it.

[janinedog]

Not that this necessarily makes things any better for you, but just to clarify, this has nothing to do with SUP--the decisions for how sponsored themes would show up in the new customize area were made by Six Apart. Also, things were very similar in the old customize area too--Paid users saw the sponsored themes in the drop-down mixed in with the rest of the themes (in alphabetical order), while Basic/Plus users saw them at the top of the list (special placement).

So really, the only thing that's new here is that you're seeing sponsored themes in the new customize area for the first time. How and where Paid users see them hasn't changed since sponsored themes first came about a long time ago.

[sukeban]

I would like to remark that this post on the Vox Team blog (which passes for news there) is from one week ago, March 17 2008:
http://team.vox.com/library/post/theme-party.html Which is why we're so excited to announce the HP "What Do You Have to Say?" Theme Design Contest.

All you have to do to enter is design a theme that showcases your personal style and creativity. The winning theme will be made available to millions of bloggers on Vox, TypePad and LiveJournal. Plus, if your theme is chosen as the winner, you'll win some really cool prizes from HP

(Bolding mine)

I frankly don't know why is there a Six Apart contest about layouts that will be displayed at LJ and other 6A sites -- they sold us last November, right?

[janinedog]

The Six Apart Sales team is still in charge of sales-related work for LiveJournal, at least until we get our own Sales team set up and running. Six Apart is still running operations for us as well until we get that set up.

[sukeban]

Okay. It is still very confusing, anyway... ¬_¬;