Make Money Fast With LiveJournal!
Sep. 23rd, 2009 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurIt'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...
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-23 05:51 pm (UTC)My purpose in using LJ is as an extension or substitute for in-person communication.
I would object horribly if you interrupted a conversation with me to recite a commercial for Pepsi. It would bother me if I began to feel that the purpose of our conversations was to hawk Pepsi.
The subversion of motivations for human conversation into a monetary purpose, is disgusting.
We have a "friend" in common (who I no longer really like), who once convinced me that it would be really nice if a bunch of us "friends" booked some space together at a B&B for an event. Later, I found that his motivations were to get a free room, and that he was acting as a booking agent for the B&B. (He, of course, didn't mention it: the B&B proprietor mentioned it to me, because of COURSE I would know.)
It was at that moment that I decided this pseudo-friend had little worth as a person, to me.
We have reached a cynical age, and I despise things that increase our mutual cynicism of one another. The profiting from friendships is surely the height of that cynicism.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-23 06:57 pm (UTC)