LJ Basic Accounts No Longer Available

[riari]

As usual with certain LJ news lately, its being found out by word of mouth.

The End of Basic Accounts on no_lj_ads.

And on the most current news post it is very briefly and vaguely mentioned that: "We streamlined and simplified things so that now it’s faster and easier than ever to create a LiveJournal account." Statement from VP of Product Development Jason Shellen. With more spin of course.

Entire thread where someone first brought up the no Basic accounts anymore.

I think if they were upfront about it, it wouldn't have been as much as an outrage. There are LJ Support volunteers even posting in that thread advising them that they should have been upfront about it.

So far Basic users are okay. I'm not sure if they can continue to create more Basic account, but now the options are all Plus and Paid. I just started reading the news comments and it'll take a while since those commentors are fast.

Thanks to isiscolo for pointing this out.

Man, and this day was so awesome too.

ETA Thursday: Oh, they updated the news journal with another post. That was posted today. And oh wow it's got 22 pages of comments already. No apology, just more spin along the lines of "We're still working out how to strike just the right tone when communicating with such a diverse and complex collection of communities." Not that I expected an apology. Or much really. I'm shocked they posted so shortly after the original post.

The comments I've seen so far? Seem mostly to be "Tell us before making such a change." That was four pages in. I'm not tackling the rest.

PS. I really debated making this a new post, but decided on an ETA. I may regret that later. ^_^

Comments

[sarcastic-elf.livejournal.com]

Nah, there would have been an outrage, regardless. Look at the fuss that is made anytime LJ makes a change.

Well, they can't blame A6 (or whover was running it before) anymore.

[riari.livejournal.com]

True, but the whole outrage of finding out such a thing by word of mouth definitely wouldn't be there. A simple explanation would have gone a long way (for some people anyway). Though, yeah, there would have been some outrage over that.

It's worse being a new company doing this after SixApart's mistakes since they had a chance to be open and just blew it. I think they can learn from their mistakes and be open about it but they'll have to do it quickly to even begin to earn back some people's trust.

[sarcastic-elf.livejournal.com]

SixApart. I knew there was an 'A' and a '6' involved in the name somewhere.

I think LJ's just cursed. Kinda like the Hope Diamond but instead of death the possessor is cursed with bad decision making skills. Jury's out on which is the worse fate (especially when dealing with angry virtual mobs is taken into consideration).

[riari.livejournal.com]

I like that analogy. Because it is so true. They are in the process of making an advisory board and still ignore one of the member's suggestions to not do it. (He was also the creator of LJ. I wonder if he ever regrets selling it.)

Angry virtual mobs are a pretty bad fate. And LJ's got a pretty vicious mob.