Livejournal needs to quit insulting my intelligence. Introducing a new for-profit business under the LJ imprimatur is all very well, but does moocardsreally get to be just a personal journal instead of a community? It seems this is a sneaky way to do two things:
1. get around having to brand this corporate journal with the "sponsored community" tag. 2. allow the sponsors to get backdoor access to the friends-locked posts of anyone dumb enough to friend the journal in order to make an order.
The later part is particularly concerning, mostly because the I don't know what kind of data-mining software they've got, but it seems like they could get a lot of potentially sensitive personal data that way, and since you've freely shared it with them, they could use it for targetted marketing and well as customer profiling (data that could be really valuable information to a third party). I'm not all up in a panic over this; I didn't friend the damn journal, after all. But still.
LJ, I could do with a little less bungled handling of your mission to peg us all in the ass with your advertisements, okay?
I'm kind of reluctant to post this here, but I don't know where else to post it.
Dude... the movie is out, and you're "wrapping up the discussion" because of that? Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me like discussion *after* the movie was released would be much more productive than discussion *before* it was released.
So, what are LJ's PR people telling the outside world about our little controversy?
When the new sponsored elements were announced on LiveJournal's corporate blog Friday night, the news was promptly met with an outcry from its members. Much of that was due to poor communication rather than problems with the sponsored communities and features themselves, according to Berkowitz.
"We clearly made a couple of mistakes in the implementation of the new features," he said. "There's a grey line around what constitutes advertising, and in some cases that line was drawn in the wrong place."
Sigh. Miscommunication is not the problem. SPONSORED COMMUNITIES are the problem. Did the thousands and thousands of angry comments fail to successfully impart this message??
There is at least one other Sponsored Comm: ampdmobile. As of the time of this posting, it is showing up with a regular community icon, not the special green "sponsored community" one.
No posts yet.
The moderator, skaplan, identifies himself in his profile as the maintainer of the ampdmobile community, although he does not say that he is an employee of Ampd Mobile.
ETA: As of 9:30 pm CDT on October 6, all three known sponsored communities are now appearing with the green "sponsored comm" icon.
After having this community on my friends list for a while, I wanted to reply for a bit, 'cuz I can see some interesting discussion ahead.
First off, though - I'm not LiveJournal staff. I've already been confused for a staff member at one point so I just wanted to make clear right now that I'm not. I'm talking as a user like everyone else.
Firstly, for users like me who hate the current icon, I whipped up this quick Greasemonkey script: http://matrix.theblob.org/greasemonkey/lj-sponsored-icon.user.js . It changes the sponsored community icon to the one proposed here. I find it much easier to tell the difference. Note, however, that it'll still take effect when LiveJournal changes the actual icon themselves (as they've said they will), so you may want to disable the script at that time if the new icon is good enough.
Now, my views on the whole thing:
Yes, the company running the scienceofsleep community are being pretty stupid. This whole fiasco isn't reflecting well on them at all (as I mentioned in this comment), and I can see where the shill accusations are coming from. I don't really have much to say on those particular accusations - I don't know what to think.
On the one hand, I've talked with the guys at LJ enough to be reasonably certain that they mean it when they say that they've checked those users out and that they're real people. On the other hand, there are concerns I have about various things, like the way the maintainers don't show their connection to the community in their profiles (except for b1soux now, but he/she didn't have it there before).
To be honest, though, guys, I'm seeing some pretty wild conspiracy theories going on around here. Though I'm not LiveJournal staff, I can tell you that LiveJournal is not refusing to link interests that are anti-advertisements, for example. That'd be silly, especially given that LiveJournal give their code away to other developers, so people would be able to tell if they were doing such a thing. (Yes, I realise it would be possible for them to have a modified copy on the actual site, but that would cause more problems for LJ than it would solve, and having chatted with some of the devs, I don't believe they're the sort of people to do that.)
I personally don't believe sponsored communities are a good idea. I think there's too much opportunity for companies to abuse the system, even with the improvements that are being made to sponsored comms. It does also take away from the fact that LiveJournal is meant to be a journalling site. Communities are a good thing - they encourage discussion - but I don't believe it's good when they're backed by companies.
i joined the scienceofsleep community after i had seen the movie on saturday. i thought it was cool or whatever, and i didn't think that the sponsorship would really take away from the whole livejournal experience, as our overlords had promised us nothing of the sort.
.. and then i sat down and actually READ the community and the comments. particularly the post with 220 comments attached. in a word? gross. i had read a post initially about how the spam needed to stop or whatever, and i thought it was some typical whiny LJ user going on about serious business, etc. then i saw that every comment i made was being screened [though mine were being let through], along with the replies, which i was able to read via email. not cool in the least. censorship should NEVER exist on a journaling website. and that is when i decided to read back posts. imo, boycotting the movie is a tremendously stupid idea. i think we should just all bitch to lj_biz as much as humanly possible. boycotting really won't do that much, i don't think.
Oh, this is embarrassing... I just tried uploading a post to lj_biz instead of to this community. Eeep.
Anyway, this is what I wanted to say:
Calling on an icon expert! I just had this idea for an icon (see the icon?), but here I am at work with nothing to make it with except Paint, and no time to play with it anyway.
Would someone else like to make it pretty? I think that it might be even better with a picture of Brad, but I'm not sure.
Hey, guys, have you seen the Business Week Online article about Six Apart that came out last week?
The article, based on an interview with Mena Trott, the founder of Six Apart, states that:
Two of Six Apart's tools are supported by ads. LiveJournal is a blogging and social-networking community primarily for the under-30 set, offering free, subscription, and advertiser-supported blog services. It alone boasts 11 million users. A recent addition, Vox, is similar to LiveJournal but has more privacy controls and is focused on a more mainstream audience. Since opening a test version in June, Vox has been completely advertiser-supported.
In other words:
1. 6A's official position is that LJ is one of the two 6A tools that are "supported by ads". 2. 6A still thinks that LJ is "primarily for the under-30 set". 3. 6A is telling people that LJ has 11 million users, even though we know that there are 11 million accounts. Of those, most are inactive. Of the remaining 1 million accounts that have shown any activity in the past month, most are secondary accounts. (I myself have 4 accounts, for example.) My guess is that there are a half a million unique users, at most. 4. Vox, 6A's premiere, advertising-supported journaling tool, is trying to get the "mainstream audience" (by which they mean... over 30?).
Read the entire interview -- it's an eye-opener!
(originally in a comment, now cross-posted to my own journal)
And I think she's got an idea there. Perhaps we should find a way to support it, if we've got no choice in keeping these "sponsored communities" around?
Edit: I'd also like to point out two very disturbing new developments:
Is there anyone else out there who would be interested in writing a (postal) letter or postcard to the powers-that-be at SixApart?
Barak Berkowitz 548 4th Street San Francisco,CA 94107
This is the CEO of SixApart and their San Francisco office. I was given this address by a company representative in response to an email to lj_ads@livejournal.com.
Help me write postcards and letters. They're harder to ignore than email or lj comments.
Edit: Postcards are easy to read, environmentally friendly (less paper waste) and cheap to mail. You can even make one out of an index card or a piece of scrap card stock.
I'm sure many of you (especially those in the United States) could simply print out the replies that you've already posted here and here, put them in an envelope, and slap a stamp on it. I think it's worth a try. By the way, the original idea for mailing letters came from this thread.
It was mentioned in an earlier post that there should be a seperate community from scienceofsuck that's specificially for boycotting LJ sponsors - well, there seems to be one for that purpose over at antisponsoredlj, if anyone would like to take a look at that.
At least as of last night, I had read through ALL of the comments on the lj-biz post. As of today, I've fallen behind a bit, but still -- I saw many and various responses, including a lot of very thoughtful and useful suggestions which we might want to pursue as well as a lot of pointed and bitter observations. Here are links to just a few of the most relevant comments, for people who don't have the time or patience to read through the comment screens. Feel free to add your own links.
It feels like we’re bringing the public sector into the private, crossing the lines that make the system work. What if sponsored communities begin shutting down the episode- and comic- sharing communities dedicated to the distribution of their products? Or the icon makers who use footage from their shows – technically, copyrighted material? Where the shortsighted corporate viewpoint may expect a rise in sales as the supply of free episodes is cut off, I expect the opposite: by castrating the ability for established fans to bring new blood into the fanbase, production companies will probably end up seeing less people interested in their shows overall, along with a drop in stats for paying consumers.
That’s just my prediction, mind, and I’m no economics major. But doesn’t it make sense? I know I’m speaking to a mostly-fen list here, so: how many of you would have purchased a single fannish item if not for exposure to the show through your online time? Would you want to attend conventions if it were just to browse, rather than to meet people you met in fanfic communities and the like? Am I stretching things too far? (Ah, no.)
Let’s go the opposite way. What if these sponsored communities brought fanworks to the companies’ attentions; if those attentions then realized the free advertising service provided them by the communities? A completely restrained hand at this point – total laissez-faire – might backfire. Our little fan neighborhoods are currently miles from Downtown, where big business lives, and so we’re fairly certain they won’t start listening in to each conversation we hold, as long as we keep it down. We maintain a healthy awareness of the legal consequences they’ll hit us with if they become aware of us; or, if they already are, the consequences of forgetting to be respectful of their power and the basic by-the-books wrong of what we’re doing. Conversely, they’re either not aware of us, or they’re aware and choosing to skip the paperwork of lawsuits in favor of benefiting from our free advertising. If they moved out to the ‘burbs with us and then continued to leave us to our own devices, however, we’d get too cocky. Probably get more brazen with episode sharing and more lax about copyright credit. We’d start taking more profit from them than they gained through us. But if they cracked down on us then, our arrogance and false sense of “we have the right!” would make the backlash worse on them. At least now, when isolated cases –do- get called to the carpet, it’s with an understanding that that’s the breaks, that we were running that chance all along.
My point is that where we are right now is in balance. And as furious as I am about the whole situation from a personal views standpoint, I do also have some pure curiosity as to what, economically, would happen to fandom if the source, supply, and supplicants were drawn closer together through sponsored communities.
I'd like to get some numbers on what kinds of fixes people think are necessary, so I'm going to use my Awesome Paid Member Powers for the side of good. Please select the minimum number of options—while I'm sure that killing the feature would make you happy, I somehow doubt 6A would go for it.
(No, I'm not on the staff or anything; I'm just curious about what people think they need to do.)
And if the maintainers don't mind, I'd like to recommend that we link people to this poll in posts we make in our own journals about this sponsored fiasco; I wouldn't mind seeing the opinions of members who aren't annoyed enough to join this community, too.
Poll #834256How can LJ fix sponsored communities?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All
Please select the minimum set of options that would be acceptable to you.
They don't need to do anything at all—it's just peachy as it is. 5 (4.0%)
Six Apart should assure us that they won't let the sponsors tell them to shut down communities, delete icons, remove posts, or ban members who offend them. 87 (70.2%)
Links to sponsored communities in lists of communities should be clearly labeled. 79 (63.7%)
Sponsored communities should have a distinctive prefix on their names. 54 (43.5%)
Links to sponsored communities should have a different icon next to them. 85 (68.5%)
Paid members shouldn't see live links—they should have to retype the name. 18 (14.5%)
No member should see live links to sponsored communities. 16 (12.9%)
Paid members shouldn't see references to sponsored communties in listings of communities. 25 (20.2%)
No member should see references to sponsored communities in listings of communities. 15 (12.1%)
Sponsored communities should be invisible to paid members. 18 (14.5%)
Sponsored communties should be invisible to all non-Plus members. 26 (21.0%)
There's nothing they can do to fix sponsored communities—Six Apart needs to remove the feature entirely. 51 (41.1%)
LiveJournal has jumped the shark; I won't be happy even if they disable sponsored communities entirely. 14 (11.3%)
A thought crossed my mind on the way home from work, and I was wondering what you thought. At last rough estimate, there were over 2000 comments from unique people who said no in some form or another about this idea. We told this to SA/LJ.
What if we collectively as LJ users started telling these sponsors in a NON TOS VIOLATING way:
Fuck you, we don't want you here, leave LJ. We don't care about your $product, you are not welcome here!
Or something to that effect. If they get a couple hundred comments a week, will they get the hint and leave? Will they complain to SA and they delete our accounts and ban us?
Six Apart may own the servers and pay for the bandwidth, but this is our community, this is our place. It is designed for us as users, community owners, and followers to use. We don't want it, we have made our voices heard to our providers. I feel we need to make our voices heard to the advertisers as well. If they don't feel welcome, if they get negative feedback will they pack it up and go away? I feel like we are a bunch of gazelles and the sponsors are the lions, individually they can capture us and eat us up, but if we all gather together we can chase off the lions, we can send them on their way.
What do you think? Think they will delete us all for some stupid "you mad sad faces at our advertisers" or do you think that LJ will give us the freedom of speech to allow us to tell them where to go stick it (keeping within the TOS mind you) and the sponsors stay? Do you think that there will be one or two that will actually pack it up?
What are sponsored communities? How do I set one up?
A sponsored community is a LiveJournal community that is created and maintained by another company. They can use these communities to post information about various products or services relevant to their business. For example, a movie studio can use a sponsored community to promote the release of a new movie or DVD.
Like LiveJournal communities, users who are interested in a particular sponsored community are welcome to join the community and post comments or entries, depending on the community's individual settings. All sponsored communities are noted as such, both within the community and in the community spotlight on the home page. They are also specially designated within interest searches.
If you're interested in creating a sponsored community, you can contact our Sales team.
"specially designated"... You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means...
[EDIT] (So much for my mad copy-and-pasting skillz; I didn't post what I was looking for.)
Results when logged off: "Sponsored communities"/little blue box with scienceofsleep community. Okay, that's fine. "Relevant communities"/scienceofsleep community in the mix. Uh-oh.
Results when logged on (perm account): No "Sponsored communities" box. Huzzah. "Relevant communities"/scienceofsleep community is still there. *sigh* That's what I thought. [/EDIT]
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31 (17.6%)