Livejournal, the popular blogging website, has once again performed a bait and switch on its users.  The trouble this time?  Basic accounts are no longer available to new subscribers.  Some background and definitions: (feel free to skim down if you know this already)

Permanent Accounts have all Paid Account features without an expiration date, plus the following:
  • Upload up to 100 userpics versus the 30 userpics offered to Paid accounts.
  • Maximum number of loyalty userpics.
  • Access to 10240 MB (10 GB) of ScrapBook photo storage space versus the 2 GB offered to Paid accounts.

Paid Accounts:

  • Styles:
    • Ability to have exact control over your journal's layout by creating S1 custom styles and S2 custom styles;
    • Access to additional S2 styles: Component, The Boxer, and Expressive;
    • Access to all options in the S2 customization wizards and the Advanced Customization area;
    • Access to 50 links in your S2 link list, rather than the 10 allowed to Basic Account users;
  • Userpics:
    • Access to 30 userpics, rather than the 6 allowed to Basic Account users.
    • Ability to purchase add-on userpic space for an additional 70 userpics.
    • Ability to browse and search through your userpics when posting or commenting by clicking the "Choose userpic" button next to the userpic selection option.
    • Note: Although communities with Paid Accounts are given more userpics and can have add-on userpic space, neither maintainers nor members can select the userpics when posting entries;
  • Ability to create custom mood themes;
  • Ability to insert polls into your LiveJournal entries.
    • Maintainers of all account levels can post polls to their Paid community .
    • Basic members and moderators of a Paid community cannot post polls in the community.
  • Access to the complete range of options for embedding your journal into your home page and the reverse ability to set up domain forwarding, so that your domain points to your LiveJournal;
  • A @livejournal.com email forwarding address;
  • Access to the text messaging feature;
  • Ability to see up to 100 recent comments, rather than the 10 allowed to Basic account users;
  • Access to your Friends of Friends list (http://mtgat.livejournal.com/friendsfriends/);
  • Ability to filter entries according to security when viewing your journal, as well as when viewing other journals.
  • Ability to notify Weblogs.com of (public) updates to your journal.

Always available up until this point has been another account level, the Basic Account.

  This featured up to six userpics, a small choice of styles and designs, lower functionality and less access to some bells and whistles, but overall it was a good, simple free blog.  And most importantly, there were no ads.

After the acquisition of Livejournal by SixApart, another account level was added, the Plus Account, which had some of the bonuses of a Paid account (more userpics, text messaging, more styles available), but with the added presence of ads all over one's journal.

As of now, no new Basic Accounts can be created.  Livejournal accounts created prior to March 12, 2008, are eligible to be converted to Basic Accounts, and the current Basic accounts that exist are (thus far) not in danger.  According to Jason Shellen, Livejournal's VP of Product Development, "From a product perspective it was more about creating a new registration process that was easier for new users to understand. I'm sure it's been ages since many of you signed up for an account, but it was quite confusing and included a table of options that was not very inviting to new users."  He added, "The creation of new Basic accounts is what is being stopped. In fact, one of the reasons contributing to going with Plus instead of Basic was that most users coming through the site were opting for Plus anyway."  (He has yet to respond to another user's comment that "Plus is the default setting" as an explanation of why that might be.)

Does this matter to everyone?  Not really.  Current users of Livejournal are (allegedly) unaffected, and new users would never know the difference unless they were told.  Of course this ignores the current users who maintain and create multiple acounts for various reasons; I've got at least seven, including communities.  For those of us who have been long-standing members of the Livejournal community, this action (unannounced, no less) once again demonstrates that this isn't the company we originally joined.  Livejournal was founded for many reasons, and no, it hasn't always been free.  Back in the day, one needed user tokens or the willingness to pay for a two-month subscription minimum to come aboard and play.  But we weren't advertised at, and the user tokens allowed us to pass along the love.  For something that most of us came at as a free service, the number of Paid and Permanent account on my Friends list alone must have bought Brad Fitzpatrick a new Jaguar.  We paid into the system because it was important to us to pass it along, because it was a good networking site, because all the cool fans were there, because we could tell everyone else: "Come join.  It's free.  And if you like it, you can pay for more."

The creation of the Plus accounts was the first nail in that coffin; users became products to be marketed to advertisers, not customers to be kept satisfied.  The repeated retreads of the Terms of Service, subject to the whims of busybody special interest groups, lost Livejournal the respect of fans who'd previously felt they'd found an online home.  Many of those Paid and Plus accounts went away in response to the heavy-handed and boneheaded antics of this past summer.  Fans migrated, others dug in, hoping the latest storm would pass so we could go back to squeeing.

Now our new overlords have taken away the primary growth source for the site, and have switched our little commune into a commercial site.  Brad, $deity love him, is angry about this too.  "SUP apparently sees no value in freeloaders not looking at ads, not paying, and oh wait... producing most the content for other members to read, other members who are looking at ads and paying for their accounts."

No pirate songs, guys, but seriously?  I'm reaching the point of showing them my bottom and going to Journalfen.  What do you think?