Without prior announcement, it is no longer possible to creäte a Basic user account on LiveJournal. The change wasn't presented to the Advisory Board for prior discussion. (When I want your advice, I'll ask for it!)

Even Brad Fitzpatrick has been roused from smug complacency, albeït perhaps only because of his commitment to a business model:

In any case, 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.

Presumably СУП understands that, for the time being, existing Basic accounts cannot be mandatorily converted to Plus accounts without alienating most of their content providers, but believes that a fair number of potential future subscribers who would have chosen the ad-free option will go ahead and chosen the Plus account (or perhaps now even the Paid account), such that any actual net loss of content providers will be more than off-set by greater ad-density (and by subscription fees).

Unless their model fails in sufficiently spectacular manner, when they reach the point where active Basic accounts are perceived to be a sufficiently small share of existing accounts, these will be converted to Plus accounts after some subsequent major (or ostensibly major) software change.

Tags: LiveJournal

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