LiveJournal Ads
Asides, WordPress
LiveJournal is adding a new service level with ads. They seem to be approaching it pretty sanely, and I imagine an ad-supported version of Typepad will follow soon. We’ve considered this approach on WP.com, basically opt-in ads, but (like Brad) I really really dislike advertising on personal pages.
Ad-supported TypePad has been experimented with on Friendster for a while now. It’s not offered on TypePad.com but TypePad licensed sites definitely have utilized the option.
Normally, I’m not a big fan of ads nor services that use ads as their source of income… However, I am impressed about how well thought out Brad’s position is on this, and I think opt-in advertising isn’t a terribly bad way to go.
When you consider that a sizable chunk of LJ’s user base is high school and college students with limited or no income (aka the people in the unable to pay catagory) and probably most of those people are already used to being bombarded by ads (see the obtrusiveness of the ads on MySpace), opting to see ads on LJ for the exchange of more features isn’t so bad of a deal.
Plus, being eventually able to control what KIND of ads are displayed on your blog is very thoughtful of them. Most services don’t give you that option.
Do the users get any action on the ads? Or this is in trade for higher service. Sounds messy, and I agree with the yucky nature of ads on personal pages.
Advertising are weapons of evilness. Don’t do it, or you will support Satan.
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Hm, what about ad sharing for WordPress.com? Let people input their Google Adsense key, and a certain percentage of the ads shown will use their key and a certain percentage will use WordPress.com’s key.