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

• 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.