Punching the monkey...

[bradfitz]

Hi, LiveJournal founder here. I haven't posted here in awhile, but I figured it was time I made an appearance. If you don't remember any of my previous rants over the past seven years or so, the summary is that I hate advertising. Especially punching animated monkeys that slow down my computer and distract me from what I'm reading.

Ever since

Comments

[idonotlikepeas]

Uh-oh! Giving people more options? What's wrong with you! You're supposed to force people to comply with your business model, not let them decide things. It's almost like you give a shit about your users or something.

[lordlucan]

Absolutely! Isn't that, like, totally unAmerican? Or something?

[tjackson]

I'm assuming perm is in the same 'section' as paid?

[zhonnika]

Yes!

[quidditchmaster]

Great icon. =D

[slappytanker]

Yours looks familiar :)

[ursamajor]

Heh, yeah, that was my first question.

[supersat]

Furthermore, if you gain more access to the style systems with the ad accounts, what's stopping someone from abusing HTML/CSS to hell and back to hide the ads? If XSS attacks are hard to filter, I can only imagine how hard it'll be to stop people from blocking the ads through style extensions.

[idonotlikepeas]

"What features will the new account level have?

We haven't worked out those details. The idea is they'll have most of the paid user features but with less capacity, and without the ability to, say, customize their journal style enough to be able to remove ads. :-)"

[tbone]

Anytime you can give people more choice without taking anything away, that's a good thing. Rock on, guys.

[swerved]

It's always sad when someone sells out their principles for money, but if money is the only thing that keeps this service going then there isn't a whole lot of choice. I don't want to see my journal die because LJ couldn't make enough money to stay afloat, no matter how much I detest Ads.

[contestant]

You don't get ads if you don't want them. You have to specifically opt-in to get them. If you don't want them, just don't opt-in, and everything keeps spinning. :-)

[swerved]

Thank you for that marvelous summary of a post that I've already read and understood.

[emmavescence]

I think that's where I am on the whole thing. I'm somewhat reserving judgement until I know more about it. I know some people whose opinions on LJ I trust think it's a cool idea. But I can't help feelig a little sad, because, dude, it's ADS on LJ!