I'm admittedly out of the loop, but I just found out that the new owners of LiveJournal are eliminating the basic (free) account; new users no longer have the option to create a free, ad-free journal. It seems I moved to Blogger just in time! But on a less selfish note, I'm wondering how this change will work. The whole point of LJ is to participate in a free (or cheap, for those who already have paid accounts) exchange of ideas and observations. Many people actually use the site for journals, chronicles of every day life, rather than blogs - theirs are more internal than external transmissions. In fact, I imagine the bulk of the content on LJ is contributed by basic account holders who, like me, aren't going to want to pay for something they can get free elsewhere (namely, an ad-free opportunity to express thoughts online).
So who will be left on LJ? I'm guessing the site will continue to be populated by some of the current basic account holders (since it's still ad-less for them), a few paying bloggers, and a few newcomers who don't mind the ad bombardment. I have recommended LJ to friends in the past, and they have joined with free accounts, but there's no way I'm going to invite people over there now, if it means that they have to put up with ad content that existing users don't have to suffer.
So I've decided that I'm out. I've just downloaded all my entries from the past 4 years and archived them for safety, in the hopes that some day, I'll be able to import them here. Sigh. Sometimes commercialism isn't such a great thing.
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