LiveJournal Introduces "Sponsored Content"

piphil writes, "LiveJournal.com has just announced via their Business Discussions journal that they are introducing 'sponsored communities and features.' This has lead to an outcry from those who watch this community, who accuse LiveJournal of starting down the 'slippery slope' towards placing advertising on users' journals — some of which users already pay for the privilege of not having to see ads on the site. Read more below."

Interestingly, a few years ago — before LiveJournal's takeover by SixApart.com — the management released a "Social Contract" stating that LiveJournal would remain advertisement-free. Unfortunately it is impossible to link to this page at LiveJournal, as it has been silently deleted. However, we can read a copy of the document on the Internet Archive.

The user outcry has so far been limited to those who actively watch the lj_biz community. However, users are employing their own "viral marketing" techniques to spread the word across the user base. Many are worried about a MySpace-like descent into user-targeted advertising.

All this comes after the user base resisted introduction of advertising-supported user accounts, which swapped paying for extra features for seeing "targeted" banner adverts on the site.

These events raise prickly issue of user rights on such websites, and the validity of "user contracts" that can be changed at will by the provider with no subsequent compensation to affected users.

Comments

Oddly enough

[Spazntwich]

So has Slashdot, as evidenced by this "article."

At least LJ is admitting to it.

When to introduce advertising

[truthsearch]

Many web site owners already know that it's usually considered bad practice to add advertising to a well established site. People who blog about blogging usually tell people to put adsense up right away to a new site rather than add it later. Regular visitors seem to take the later addition of advertising as a bit of an insult. But they're more inclined to accept the site with its advertising features present from the start. Any significantly intrusive changes to a site will cause problems. Even more so if it's purely done for profit.

...and?

[NitsujTPU]

It's not like LiveJournal is strapping their users to chairs and tattooing advertisement on their foreheads. If you're that vehemently against this, you could

1) Use facebook to social network
2) Use blogger
3) User the facebook notes feature to aggregate your blog in (if blogger is supported... if it isn't you could use the facebook API)

Of course, facebook uses ads on their site...

Also, it's not a step towards ads embedded in your LJ. If you want all of the features, you either pony up some cash or get ads embedded (I don't think that the "sponsored" level gets as much as the paid level).

Who cares? Start a similar service. There's no patent preventing you from doing so to the best of my knowledge.

Re:...and?

[Aranwe Haldaloke]

Nevermind that to see the ads, you actually have to go and search them out, since the banners are in the community pages themselves, or you get them if you decide to use those newfangled features. It's all opt-in.

There was also an uproar when they introduced Plus accounts, which were also introduced as opt-in, and have so far remained that way. I don't see anyone complaining about those now, and even though I have a few friends with Plus accounts I've yet to see a single ad from them.

Re:It's good to be a pessimist

[superflyguy]

But they're not forcing ads on their users; only doing all they can to convince their users to accept ads themselves and force them on non-users. I still don't see any ads on livejournal. When I do, I'll take the archives that I save periodically with the scrapbook firefox extension and move somewhere else if they annoy me. But if I'm not forced to see ads, I don't care if others decide to see ads. As long as it remains voluntary, even to new users, it's not a problem.