(no subject)

[channonyarrow]

Wow.

So, I logged out of this account to do something else. Then I forgot that I'd done that, looked at my flist, and clicked on a three-word-entry that I wanted to read the comments on.

NOW I know why I pay for an account. When the ads are larger than the frigging entry? Yeah, that's bad. Of course, the ad would have been larger than the entry unless the entry had been a 20K-word polemic on Kant, honestly. Is it new that they put an ad bar IN the entries of Plus accounts, between the body of the entry and the comments? I hadn't thought that was something they were going to do, but then again, I'm paid.

Now I wonder why ANYONE signs up for an LJ if that's the sort of shit they see when they log in with a free account or just go directly to the page with no account

Comments

[elynne.livejournal.com]

LJ isn't about the users; it's about selling eyeballs/clicks to advertisers. That's what it became when it started selling ads, and that's all it is now. It's only going to continue to slide. I'm writing this as a permanent paid user, who hasn't yet bothered to try to find another venue... even if every non-permanent user stopped paying for service Right Now, it wouldn't matter; I'd bet you money that the vast majority of LJ's income is from ad revenue, while a pittance comes from subscribers.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally agree with this - I've been bewailing the MySpacisation of LJ for ages, and it was one of the points I brought up in "Why I Am Not Buying A Permanent Account, Fuckheads" during the perm sale.

The thing that I actually find hilarious is how rarely (right NOW) anyone is ponying up for a sponsored community. I haven't bothered to find another venue yet, but honestly, if LJ goes further kaput, I'm going to GJ. At least there I know I'm not PAYING for anything so I can't EXPECT anything; here, I had this CRAZY thought that the money I paid mattered.

Much like for the icon!

[faithinthejudas.livejournal.com]

I'm incredably good at denial and ignoring things I don't like, but as soon as I convince myself its worth it I'm switching over.

PS: Don't try to email my school account. Apparently it stopped recieving new emails about a week ago and I don't know why.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

To your hotmail we shall go, then!

I will probably switch to GJ when enough of my friends are there, but that's mainly because I haven't evaluated places like WordPad and others to find out if they have the friending function, which is the main thing I want.

I will NEVER EVER EVER make MySpace my primary account, EVER, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES. I WILL WRITE MY OWN BLOGGING CODE FIRST.

Of course, I have a MySpace - I think newborn babies have MySpaces. I just don't use it.

[mr-quackenbush.livejournal.com]

i don't have any friends with Plus accounts, thankfully, so my free account does just fine by me.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realised how bad it is. I THOUGHT it was just ads on the main page and on the userinfo pages, but this indicates that that's either changed or I wasn't paying attention.

I'm not sure why people would do the Plus account, but I guess I haven't recently been in a position where I REALLY REALLY wanted something and wasn't willing/able to pay for it or trade for it. My ex had a paid account on the virtue of winning fic contests where the prize was two months of LJ time and on the virtue of having a lot of friends who were willing to give her that as a gift (and without the "OMG my account is expiring...anyone want to pay to reup me?" which I've occasionally bought people).

Of course, I still want a cruise missile, and I don't think I can afford that, but that's fairly pricey. Either I have to get to Tajikistan to get one cheaply or I have to get a LOT of money.

[mr-quackenbush.livejournal.com]

the thing I don't get is what the real advantage is of a plus account. I mean, more icons and layout possibilities? is that really worth it?

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Well, it is to me (I have paid, as mentioned) because I like designing layouts and there are a LOT of things that aren't possible with a free account. Also, icons have really become part of my "vocabulary", and I promise that whenever an icon selection LOOKS random, particularly in comments, it's been carefully chosen on the basis of something that is probably not instantly obvious (oddly, no one's ever asked me why I picked a specific icon). So having a hundred and fifteen icons is something I use, though I don't know how often I use specific ones any more - they do tend to trend through use patterns.

But I suspect that the Plus accounts are crippled in terms of what I get as a Paid, so I don't know off the top of my head whether they have the true flexibility with design (and I do use flexibility loosely; if you ever want to spend four solid days swearing at the computer, try designing a Paid LJ layout - the one I'm using still isn't right, but I'm not interested in tweaking it further right now) or how many icons they get.