The good thing is though that as a paid user there won't be adds to see, but yet again I remain sceptical because they said things before they would never do, but it happened anyway.
I was put off by the way that the whole thing came about, having spent most of last night reading the lj_biz comm and some of the comments left on posts. I think that if LJ had come right out and said, "Look, it's economically feasible for us to start this, but we want you to know that we have implemented this, this, and this to protect our userbase and we are taking measures to limit the exposure paid users will have," then they would have been a lot better off.
But they came out and said, "Hey guys, here are these awesome features that you're going to love and they're being paid for by these companies that you're going to love too!" as though we were expected to simply go along and say, "Yay! LJ says we're going to love it, so it must be okay!" No. When you bring big bucks into what has always been a free or low-cost community, people are going to get scared, kind of like finding out that a WalMart is moving into the neighborhood. Yeah, there might be lots of good to go with that WalMart, but how many little guys are going to be closed or suffer to make way for it?
Secondly, scienceofsleepdid appear on the LJ homepage to me for several days, and I am a paid user. What this says to me is that they didn't take their promise to paid users of "no ads evah since you pay" into account and tried to slip it beneath the radar. Only when hullabaloo was made was it removed from the page when I am signed in. This makes me distrustful right off the bat.
Thirdly, all of the rules--some of which are very good--were put into place only after thousands of posts complaining and protesting. These things should have been taken care of right away, before the plan was even announced to users. While I am not sure that I agree with the people insisting that LJ should have polled their userbase first (since a business sometimes must act in a business's best interest and a customer can't possibly know all that goes into that), I don't think that it would have been a bad idea to discuss it with some users and community leaders, sort of a focus group. The issues that they are only now addressing seem like no-brainers to me, and it--again--leaves me wondering: Is LJ really that naive or were they really trying to pull something over on us?
I can't believe that they could be so naive not to set rules in place, for example, for sponsored comms spamming users and regular communities with posts.
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rosecarmine
Oops, ran out of room! :^P
Date: 2006-10-05 01:08 am (UTC)I was put off by the way that the whole thing came about, having spent most of last night reading the
But they came out and said, "Hey guys, here are these awesome features that you're going to love and they're being paid for by these companies that you're going to love too!" as though we were expected to simply go along and say, "Yay! LJ says we're going to love it, so it must be okay!" No. When you bring big bucks into what has always been a free or low-cost community, people are going to get scared, kind of like finding out that a WalMart is moving into the neighborhood. Yeah, there might be lots of good to go with that WalMart, but how many little guys are going to be closed or suffer to make way for it?
Secondly,
Thirdly, all of the rules--some of which are very good--were put into place only after thousands of posts complaining and protesting. These things should have been taken care of right away, before the plan was even announced to users. While I am not sure that I agree with the people insisting that LJ should have polled their userbase first (since a business sometimes must act in a business's best interest and a customer can't possibly know all that goes into that), I don't think that it would have been a bad idea to discuss it with some users and community leaders, sort of a focus group. The issues that they are only now addressing seem like no-brainers to me, and it--again--leaves me wondering: Is LJ really that naive or were they really trying to pull something over on us?
I can't believe that they could be so naive not to set rules in place, for example, for sponsored comms spamming users and regular communities with posts.
Or maybe I'm just getting old and cynical. :)