LJ -- nerfing basic account creation

[javasaurus]

In case you haven't read the recent LJ news, LJ has stopped the creation of new "basic" accounts (meaning the free accounts with no adverts). I think "plus" accounts are still available for free, and maybe sponsored accounts, and of course, paid accounts. In theory, existing basic accounts are not being disabled. Yet.

There seems to be some fear that LJ will convert current basic accounts to plus accounts in the near future.

I wonder how many people would switch to paid accounts to avoid losing several years worth of LJ entries. I bet the current LJ staff is wondering the same thing.

Comments

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

Makes sense -- I mean, storage space might be cheap, but it isn't free; and I'm sure the folks at LJ would like to not just break even but make a little money.

What the LJ folks are betting -- and probably not all that unreasonably -- is that LJ has reached a large enough size that people will be willing to put up with ads -- or pay -- to stay with LJ because enough other people that they know are on LJ. And they're probably right; at least enough other people that they won't switch to one of many still-free LJ clones out there, or take advantage of the existing software options for downloading or exporting their diaries. After all, the original LJ software is public domain and anyone who wants to can set up their own LJ-clone; there are tons of free blogging sofware packages out there besides LJ, and exporting and/or backing up one's diary off of LJ is relatively easy. People don't come to LJ because LJ provides a unique service, blogging wise. It's the community in it's current form -- the presence of other folks already on LJ -- which is what makes LJ in any way unique.

Not to mention that something people actually pay for is likely to be something people take more seriously -- even just a token amount like a dollar a month. Someone at LJ is probably anticipating some upcoming size constraints and thinking it might not be a bad idea to figure out some way to pay for subsequent growth -- or curtailing the rate of growth.

I guess part of my perspective comes from being part of one -- or maybe if you look at it, two -- mass migrations of a community already. I originally began interacting online as part of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan -- every friend on my friends list with blue highlighting around their icons came from that community. That community began creating online journals on OpenDiary.com; then got fed up enough with OpenDiary that over a series of months in 2001-2002 the community migrated to LiveJournal. In fact, so many of us and so much traffic migrated that in large part the original Usenet community effectively died.

So we'll see -- if LJ begins to make it's requirements to play too onerous, one might see once again a consensus to move. I would hope not -- the community of folks I have now is vastly larger than when the first migration occured -- you can see a taste of that here. But then, communities -- and friendships -- are long in years and continuity, at least in my life; and I would be more surprised if we *didn't* have more changes over the course of the decades to come than if we did.

[sparowe]

Mostly what it tells me is that I should hold onto the one LJ and one Community that I have, that don't see much work. So if I need a new account... I can buy paid for a month and then pay for a name change. Of course, if paid reverts to plus, there's no use in that, either. *sigh*

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine that they would convert paid accounts to plus. That would be like putting commercials on HBO.