Livejournal jumps the shark?

Livejournal will now be selling adverts. Only to those who want extra features for free and don't mind adverts, but they're still going to be selling adverts. daweaver isn't at all impressed, and I'm, well, confused.

Y'see, the LJ business model made sense to me. There are free riders and paid users. Those of us that pay do so because we value the service so much we pay for our account, thus subsidising the free riders. The benefits of a paid account are strong (although not as strong as they were), but we also acknowledge that we're supporting LJ, keeping it ad free, and encouraging others to use it in the knowledge that some of them will like it so much that they will also pay, thus keeping LJ going. The Rational Choice theorist in me respects this business model.

Now? We are to have another level of user, that disrupts the business model. No longer does my contribution support the rest, ads are sold to support the company, the free riders aren't just supported by the paid users. I don't know how to react to that. Still, it will give me another decision to make in August, free, paid or ads? Thing is, the ad revenue isn't mine. It's LJs. Given we have Open ID, I may switch away completely and just use my typekey open id login. Get all the benefits of LJ friends pages without the drawbacks of the Six Apart business model. We'll see.

Summary. Oh yeah, they want feedback. Go give it.

Oscar winners meme

By way of itchyfidget( All the Best Pictures since 1929 )

Not as many as I expected, given my former status as a film addict, but still a lot.

In other news, I switched my layout to one of the default 'blogging' templates, not sure I like it, but at least it's not got lots of broken image tags.