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Livejournal Apologizes For Lack of Communication
- By Melissa Wilson
- Published 03/19/2008
- Fandom
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Melissa Wilson
View all articles by Melissa Wilson
Livejournal made an official apology this evening for the lack of communication leading up to the loss of Basic accounts. From the comm:
The announcement last Wednesday was a mistake in regards to Basic accounts, as the change was not clearly stated, it did not allow for you to provide feedback, and went into effect immediately. Many of you have pointed out that the decision worried you less than the way it was communicated. You should have been given a voice, and you were not; we didn’t follow our own rules, and we apologize.
At this point we are working on a solution to enable existing LiveJournal users to create new Basic accounts as so many of you have requested. Nothing has been decided yet, but we are considering options which would allow existing users to continue to create new Basic accounts.
The post went on to suggest new plans and ideas for the future.
These include:
Product development
The announcement last Wednesday was a mistake in regards to Basic accounts, as the change was not clearly stated, it did not allow for you to provide feedback, and went into effect immediately. Many of you have pointed out that the decision worried you less than the way it was communicated. You should have been given a voice, and you were not; we didn’t follow our own rules, and we apologize.
At this point we are working on a solution to enable existing LiveJournal users to create new Basic accounts as so many of you have requested. Nothing has been decided yet, but we are considering options which would allow existing users to continue to create new Basic accounts.
The post went on to suggest new plans and ideas for the future.
Product development
- Engage new users – Devise a guide for new users to encounter and embrace all that is good in LiveJournal
- Audio-visual – Upgrade the post editor to ensure photo, video and audio posting is effectively supported
- Community platforms – Promote OpenID with leading community platforms to make LiveJournal even more accessible
- Statistics – Provide users with in-depth statistics on the popularity of communities and diaries
- Development center - Launch LJ Labs – the home of new ideas and experiments for alpha testing
- Account structure – Review structure and develop incentives to upgrade to new account
- Editorial – Introduce new means to discovering communities and users with shared interests
Also brought up was the concept of revenue-sharing, where LJ users would share in the ad revenue generated by their content. This would put users on a much more even footing with the rest of the company, making us partners (of a sort) rather than merely product-generating drones. That's a significant change in perspective on their part, if they're being earnest about it.
As of this writing, the proposed user strike on Friday is still set (amid concerns that a blow against SUP might be taken as a blow for anti-semitism by some Russian groups) although that may change now that the company has apologized for the communications screwup. We'll let you know when we know.
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Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by Leva Cygnet)
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Sharing revenue with contributors is highly doable for Livejournal, if they use Adsense API, though I could insert a many snarky comments about Google and the difficulty of Adsense API implementation from an in-the-trenches personal perspective. (The geeks out there will appreciate this: Google demands that you to call the ad code for each user individually from their server. You can't just replace the publisher ID string. For each user, you have to hit Google's server and say, "Ad code please for this user?" This becomes problematic if you're changing the appearance of the ad code site wide ... And they want you to throttle the speed of the requests ... But I digress.) Also, from a fan perspective, earning money on ads on my fanfiction & fanart is something I really, really, really do NOT want to do. DO NOT WANT. If they implement revenue sharing they need to allow fen to turn ads OFF on certain posts.
Comment #2 (Posted by Mara)
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I agree with Leva that I really do *not* want to earn money on ads on posts with fanfiction. ::wince:: I hadn't thought about that. Yikes.
Comment #3 (Posted by Daniel)
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First, please note that, even as they admitted that the change to Basic accounts was in violation of the rules, LJ did not reverse the change! Honorable behavior would undo the change and then follow proper procedure.
Second, understand that LJ is not offering revenue sharing. They are trying to figure-out how to ban pay-per-play adult communities without banning either free adult communities or communities restricted to organizations such as the Boy Scouts (who require dues from their members).