grrr re: basic account decision

[danahboyd]

::groan::

While offline this week, I learned that LJ has changed its account levels. Needless to say, Brad's pissed. I'm pissed. Not only because we both vehemently disagree with this change, but because they made such a change without consulting us. Or rather, we were both at a lunch a while back where they asked us what we thought and we

Comments

[thevelvetsun]

I have my own ideas, but I'd like to hear others' thoughts. Given that the current monetization structure is not working, what would you say should be done?You don't know me, but I hope you don't mind if I wander in here with my 2 cents

Here from no_lj_ads

[turlough]

+1

[spiralingdeeper]

I really wouldn't mind the ads if they didn't screw with my layout. InsaneJournal has ads, but they don't show up on people's journal or friends page where they have spent time and effort making their pages represent their personalities. Instead, they show up on profile pages, comment pages, any page where the free user's layout doesn't display and you get the site default

[reddragdiva]

What can they offer?

It's mediocre as a blogging platform. Make it a better blogging platform. There should be nothing wordpress.com or blogspot.com offers that livejournal.com doesn't offer.

It already kicks their arses as a social network. Make it somewhere people would just happen to set up anyway.

[thaumata]

Agreed. I am losing friends left and right to WP and have a lot of friends who are NEW to blogging who would never come here, because it's actually easier for them to host their own WP blog, and it does more

[shyfoxling]

I do wish we could add something to more than 5 memories categories at once, but I think originally Memories was not conceived of as being like tags and it hasn't caught up.

This, though:

limitations on tags. You can only have so many

What's the limit? I certainly haven't hit it, and I often think to myself "gosh, that's a long tag list, maybe I should try to consolidate it down".

[thaumata]

If I remember correctly, one may only have 1000 tags. (This seems like a lot, until you remember that some of us have blogged at least daily on LJ for years, or maintain very active communities.)

Additionally, clicking on a tag name only pulls up the last 100 entries that used that tag. I'm pretty sure there is no way around that.

[queerbychoice]

A huge number of LJ users originally joined LJ specifically because it had no ads anywhere, no ads visible to any users. We wanted to support that economic model, and many of us were willing to pay for it. Now that this economic model is rarer than it used to be, I think many of us would be willing to pay a great deal more for it. If SUP took a drastic action like no longer forcing any users to see ads anywhere on the site, I think many users would be eager to pay more money to financially support that move. Some users obviously couldn't afford more, but if there were a wide range of prices for paid accounts with varying amounts of features, I think users would be emotionally moved to pay as much as they each could afford, not so much for the sake of the features themselves as for the sake of supporting an ad-free economic model again.

Also, if SUP makes any promises about doing anything on a permanent basis to win back users' loyalty, SUP needs to back up its promises with a legally binding contract that really guarantees that

[shyfoxling]

Now that this economic model is rarer than it used to be, I think many of us would be willing to pay a great deal more for it. If SUP took a drastic action like no longer forcing any users to see ads anywhere on the site, I think many users would be eager to pay more money to financially support that move.

IAWTC. I think that carving services up into a-la-carte sections could be effective, but even barring that, for no ads (and could we cut down on the WTFery? ...oh sorry, that's me blue-skying) I'd be willing to pay say 150% what I do now.

[hdofu]

I hate the lj staff account
It allows them to hide as a conglomerate and not appear human

[7rin]

Whereas I like it because at least it doesn't look as if it's one person saying one thing, while another says something else (even if that actually happens).

completly and totally off topic,

[someoneingrey]

but your icon ROCKS.

Re: completly and totally off topic,

[7rin]

Feel free to steal, and if you get really bored, the inspiring thread's here.