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It's interesting to notice my own knee-jerk reactions sometimes.
Just got up to the announcement of the new LJ feature letting you put ads on your journal. (Basically, you can associate your journal with Google AdSense.) Intellectually, I don't have a problem with the way they're doing it -- it's strictly opt-in, and they're passing on 100% of the proceeds to you. In principle, it lets people make a little money, in a way that is very normal these days. (What's in it for LJ? It's a paid-members feature, so presumably they are hoping that bloggers who have lots of readers will find it worthwhile to pay for an account in order to make money off of Google.)
And yet, my gut reaction was quite negative: it somehow felt like it was intruding crass commercial reality yet further into the space of me and my friends. That actually surprises me -- I hadn't realized that button was there. Too many years of spam and popup ads have clearly made me resentful of them, to a degree that I find just a little irrational.
How about you? Positive, negative, indifferent?
ETA, since several people have asked in one way or another: I *believe* the scheme is that the ads won't show up when you read your friends page normally, only if you actually look at the person's journal. The reason I believe this is that they've also added a new option that lets you deliberately opt *in* to reading the ads from your friends view, apparently on the theory that it's a way to put a little money into your friends' pockets. I confess, I'm skeptical about the idea; it'll be interesting to see how many people turn that on...
Just got up to the announcement of the new LJ feature letting you put ads on your journal. (Basically, you can associate your journal with Google AdSense.) Intellectually, I don't have a problem with the way they're doing it -- it's strictly opt-in, and they're passing on 100% of the proceeds to you. In principle, it lets people make a little money, in a way that is very normal these days. (What's in it for LJ? It's a paid-members feature, so presumably they are hoping that bloggers who have lots of readers will find it worthwhile to pay for an account in order to make money off of Google.)
And yet, my gut reaction was quite negative: it somehow felt like it was intruding crass commercial reality yet further into the space of me and my friends. That actually surprises me -- I hadn't realized that button was there. Too many years of spam and popup ads have clearly made me resentful of them, to a degree that I find just a little irrational.
How about you? Positive, negative, indifferent?
ETA, since several people have asked in one way or another: I *believe* the scheme is that the ads won't show up when you read your friends page normally, only if you actually look at the person's journal. The reason I believe this is that they've also added a new option that lets you deliberately opt *in* to reading the ads from your friends view, apparently on the theory that it's a way to put a little money into your friends' pockets. I confess, I'm skeptical about the idea; it'll be interesting to see how many people turn that on...
Re: really really selfish perspective.
I have a permanent account, so I'm hopeful that I am immune from them, because they would annoy me greatly.
Re: really really selfish perspective.
That said, we have ad blocking at work and it seems to work on Adsense ads, so I likely won't see the ads while I check in over lunch. Just the rest of the time.
Re: really really selfish perspective.