Comments | no_lj_ads: The end of Basic accounts 0

ex_uniquewo in no_lj_ads

The end of Basic accounts 0_o

Mar 13, 2008 00:26

Account creation:When creating a new account you're no longer asked to choose an account level. You're only asked if you want to upgrade to a paid account. It is not mentioned anywhere that you can have a free and advertising-free account.

krysaia tells us why: "Basic Account is an option available to accounts which were created before March 12, 2008. No ( Read more... )

pushing plus level

Comments 236

verie March 13 2008, 04:53:40 UTC

Anyone remember this?

"General service technology, we will:

* Increase certain limits for Basic and Plus accounts"

Kind of hard to do ANYTHING with something that wont exist anymore, huh? ~_~

foxfirefey March 13 2008, 04:59:39 UTC

Well, in fairness, Basic accounts still exist. New personal ones just can't be created anymore. So it's still possible they will do that, and that part of the reason for this move was to limit the number of people who could take advantage of those increased limits without bringing increased revenue. It's not something I believe, but it's possible.

verie March 13 2008, 05:01:08 UTC

I really kind of doubt that. :/ More likely they'll wind up increasing the number of ads needed for a plus account, and then bump their current ads to the Basics, and then act like it's a great deal that we only have to deal with such and such number of ads instead of being upgraded to the new numbers they've imposed. ~_~

ide_cyan March 13 2008, 09:08:24 UTC

Basic accounts are EXTINCT!

Thread 6

g_shadowslayer March 13 2008, 06:14:13 UTC

One of the thing that gets me is this comment: "In fact, one of the reasons contributing to going with Plus instead of Basic was that most users coming through the site were opting for Plus anyway."

Most users were opting for Plus anyway because even when you started out trying to open a Basic account, it would automatically default you to Plus. You had to change it to a Basic account after the fact, if you noticed! I believe they eventually fixed that "glitch", but it was that way for a while.

foxfirefey March 13 2008, 06:22:06 UTC

Well, it's very possible that most users were opting for Plus. It just would have to be over 50%. That's not a high bar.

g_shadowslayer March 13 2008, 06:57:59 UTC

True, but I still suspect a number didn't actually realize up front that they were. I also don't know if they were only counting account creation stats or if they were counting the number of existing accounts of each type.

blackheartgirl March 13 2008, 07:16:59 UTC

I know it sounds like a potential nightmare, but if people really care about this site, why don't LJ users band together, raise enough money to buy back the service, and then put it back in its pre-6A state?

foxfirefey March 13 2008, 07:20:38 UTC

Newspapers estimated the SUP purchase to be at $30 million, and users would have to make good on that investment, assuming SUP would even sell. Not enough people are upset with SUP and willing to pay enough to buy it, I'd assume.

Putting things back in their pre-6A state is impossible--the leadership would have to be replaced, so by definition it would be run differently.

blackheartgirl March 13 2008, 16:28:03 UTC

THIRTY. MILLION.
Yikes. I knew it was in the millions, but not that much! 6A certainly made a profit off that, I'm sure (unless they paid Brad 30 mil).

To me, it just seems like the same situation that's going on at eBay - start up a site around the time the Internet is still growing, have a fair philosophy, create a loyal fanbase, which in turn word of mouth causes it to increase membership at a near exponential rate. Then they get money signs in their eyes and trap that very same userbase by going against their first ideals they were founded upon, knowing they can get away with it since so many users signed on initially. Doesn't anybody have integrity anymore? :|

Violation of the LJ contract and official promises njyoder March 13 2008, 08:14:09 UTC

On the LiveJournal social contract (archived copy), they promised to not have advertisements. In a variety of official LiveJournal posts in, communities such as news, they also promised this.

I'm sure you can find more pages stating this, if you look. Use the Wayback Machine to get an archived copy of the page.

Re: Violation of the LJ contract and official promises foxfirefey March 13 2008, 08:19:32 UTC

Yes. Yes they did. We have been through that fact. We went through that fact thoroughly about two years ago. I think we all recognize at this point that LJ, once upon a mystical time, "promised" not to have ads but kept its fingers crossed behind its back with the legalese.

Re: Violation of the LJ contract and official promises njyoder March 13 2008, 09:19:51 UTC

I have not read this community until now, so I didn't have a way of knowing that. As no one had posted that link, I decided to post it here for those who haven't seen it.

Re: Violation of the LJ contract and official promises foxfirefey March 13 2008, 15:58:54 UTC

Aaaaaah. Generally, we focus on the more recently broken reassurances, haha.

fatkraken March 13 2008, 13:21:14 UTC

I'm really wondering what all the fuss is about. I see my free LJ no-ads account as a PRIVILEGE, not a right. I'm fully aware that I, and 98% of other LJ users were getting a pretty sweet deal, leeching bandwidth and server space and giving nothing of any monetary value back to the site. I spend a lot of time on LJ, looking at journals and communities, using up bandwidth and not seeing a single ad. I AM NOT AN LJ CUSTOMER! paid accounts are, ad supported accounts are. Not me. customers give something BACK. I'm simply taking advantage of the free ride, but I don't pretend that because I've been doing so for a long time, the company which has bought LJ is somehow honour bound to keep letting me do so.

How did people think this was being paid for? there really aren't that many paid/supported accounts compared to free ones. We all knew that it wouldn't last forever, there are too many users for some company not to see how valuable LJ could be for them.

ceilidh March 13 2008, 14:38:59 UTC

and giving nothing of any monetary value back to the site.

Actually, yes you are. You are providing the content that brings/keeps others on the site, some of whom are either Plus/Paid/Permanent accounts. If there was no user-generated content, LJ would have nothing to make money from.

fatkraken March 13 2008, 14:52:48 UTC

that's fairly indirect though. "making the community cooler so OTHER PEOPLE will pay for things" is rather different from actually paying for them yourself. I wouldn't expect some nightclub to let someone in for free just for being pretty and well dressed because it brings in more paying punters. Some clubs DO, with major celebrities and the like, but it's not a right, it's a calculated privilege that the club has every right to withdraw ( ... )

skyshark March 13 2008, 14:56:25 UTC

Yep, you're contributing to the site.

I'm hoping, myself, that this will be the last straw that pull my friends from LJ so I can leave too. In the past, I've maintained two paid journals at once for RP purposes; people joining the RP have signed up with accounts and gone back and forth between various journals; for journals that hosted LJ ads, LJ used us for the advertising exposure. I've contributed to the flow of communities by posting stories, icons, and other me-created content, and linking and spreading the word when someone posted something interesting on a LiveJournal account. IOW, I've given back financially myself, and I've provided, at the expense of my time and energy, draws to sites where LJ displayed advertising. I stopped paying for accounts during the last PR debacle, but what's holding me back from scooting? Other LJ users I want to keep up with.

And I still think this "privelege, not a right" thing is absolutely loopy. 8D

Thread 26