Mat Bowles

Shark jumped? Livejournal finally gets the ads working

OK, the post went live a few hours back, I’ve been reading and messing around. exists, currently, just so I can mess around with different advert settings. I may also use it just to see how ugly I can get a default layout, but that’ll be a side project.

They haven’t announced it, but there are new Terms of Service and a new Privacy Policy. (both via ). has written up an analysis of the changes in LJ’s Social Contract, but my principle concern is the impact on the business model.

LJ used to be a Public Commons; free to all, and those that wished to support it financially did so and got extra perks, but we were mostly paying to support the site overall. Now, the site has adverts (and boy are they annoying; log out and trawl around the main site to see them), so I’m not paying to support the site and the services it provides to all, I’m just getting my perks.

So, from now on, I am merely buying a service from them, not supporting a site. So, I switch into annoyed consumer mode rather than site supporter. They’ve taken away the model that made LJ a great community, and turned it into just another revenue stream. Still, at least free users only see the ads on “sponsored+” journals and not the main site. Paid users (while logged in), never see them anywhere. So at least there is a reason to keep paying that I can see the point of.

/geekery - everyone have a good weekend?

April 19th, 2006 Posted by MatGB | Uncategorized | 11 comments