A couple things of note!

[foxfirefey]

Event A: Sponsored accounts are live for Cyrillic services. Additionally, people can use the Viewing Options settings to opt into Cyrillic services, which means that English users can also use Sponsored accounts if they so choose.

The three current available sponsors are Intel (intel_sp), MTC (mts_sp) and Peugeot (peugeot_sp). Possible future sponsors: alfabank_sp, miller_sp and pepsi_sp. (

Comments

[component]

hmmm that does sound sexy XD

[foxfirefey]

I am really hopeful for this one. Instead of struggling with the current oft-crufty LJ codebase, they'll be cleaning it up to make it more manageable. The people on their team have the experience to do so.

And as accommodating as IJ has been, it has an unfortunate color scheme and an unfortunate name. Dreamwidth won't have these, and Dreamwidth's changes and improvements and focus promise to provide some nice attractions other than "It's not LJ".

[component]

Exactly. I like IJ, but the sad fact of the matter is.. like you said... it's not LJ.

I'm looking forward to this.

[foxfirefey]

DW won't be LJ either--but, I am excited about how it won't be like LJ.

[ign]

A better sponsored system for advertiser value would probably allow LJs that have more traffic to apply and boot off lower trafficked LJs.

On the other hand, lower traffic journals only use small amount of server resources, so in properly designed system sponsors should pay much less for them. This kind of balanced system, where sponsors would pay for actual traffic and not a flat fee, would make them, in theory, equally interested in any journal irrespective of its rating.

However, one can also impose a flat fee and then do not let sponsors to pick-and-choose; this will more or less auto-balance high- and lower-traffic journals.

The only system which in my opinion will not work is one where sponsors would pay flat fee and then get to choose whom to sponsor.

[fredtheavenger]

I'd noticed when browsing by "Random Journal" that nearly all the ads on Cyrillic services had an LJ logo in them. It made me wish I could read Russian, because I was kind of curious as to what was going on in them.

Is there anyone here who can read Russian?

[foxfirefey]

merig00 can. It kind of makes me think that advertising is doing pretty well on the Russian side, whereas it's done pretty suckily on the other side. I think that LJ logo means that the advertiser is doing direct business with LJ instead of going through an intermediate like Google, and so SUP gets more of that advertising pie.

[ign]

I'd noticed when browsing by "Random Journal" that nearly all the ads on Cyrillic services had an LJ logo in them. It made me wish I could read Russian, because I was kind of curious as to what was going on in them.

Some advertise specific LJ communities, others various services of livejournal.ru, which has its own "marketplace", among other things. Still, there are some that advertise sites seemingly unrelated to LJ or SUP, so there is no apparent reason why LJ logo should be there; perhaps designers thought it looked cool, or just didn't come up with a better way to utilize space.

[karcy]

One of the questions raised by LJ users back when this was announced was this: were sponsors allowed to dictate what the journaller says in his or her journal, or is it completely hands-off? Suppose if I use the Peugeot layout, and yet spend entry after entry talking about how hot Tony Stark looks like with his Audi in Iron Man?

Does anyone know if this issue has been addressed by the Russian side of LJ?

[foxfirefey]

If I remember correctly, it is hands off. However, if a sponsor does not want to sponsor a journal anymore for whatever reason (ie, that person is posting content objectionable to the sponsor), the sponsor can remove their sponsorship of a journal at any given time. This seems fair to me.

[karcy]

I honestly prefer a Sponsored account to a Plus any day. I have a fanfic account that was created after March 12, and I really hated all the image banner ads, especially in the interface, argh. OTOH, I want to see banner ads on other sites outside LJ, so I don't want to install Adblock. While I'd never subject my primary journal to ads, I don't mind putting my secondary journal up for queue.

[schnee]

Sponsored accounts? Given that what's now been dubbed "plus accounts" used to be called exactly that, that's a rather confusing name. x.x

[soph]

Well, they were Sponsored+, but yeah, it's confusing a bit.

[ex_uniquewo]

And they are truly the Sponsored + accounts as they get more benefits than simple Plus ones. ;)