Oh, *now* I remember

[hummingwolf]

One of the things that kept me busy on Saturday and a small part of Sunday was watching lj_biz, specifically this post about sponsored content on LJ followed by Brad's valiant attempt at damage control, both posts of course followed by umpteen zillion comments about how much people hate the idea of sponsored content. As bad as LJ's introduction of the change may have been, Making Light points out (link via supergee) that the real problem is what the publicists for The Science of Sleep did with the sponsored "community" they got for their money.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't hate advertising. In fact, I think it provides a valuable service (along with much entertainment) as long as it's informative (or at least entertaining) and not deceptive. The problem here is the erosion of trust created by a bunch of sock puppets pretending to be a community of genuine fans. I'm a big fan of real community. Fake "sponsored community" just makes me want to claw somebody's eyes out.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i hadn't been paying any attention to this and didn't know anything about sponsored communities. yuck! at my fandom lj, i tried the plus account for about two minutes before switching back to basic as fast as i could. (and like one of the commenters in brad's thread, i hate the navstrip like the absolute plague.)

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Every time LJ makes a change of any kind, people who could give a rat's ass about the loss of civil liberties in the US crawl out of the woodwork to scream about how awful it is that LJ is lying and selling them out and the HORROR!

If people gave even a tenth this much attention and outrage to last Thursday's assault on habeas corpus, I would not fear for this country's future as I do.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I get your point. But frankly, most people don't believe the abolition of habeas corpus would really affect them (if they think about it at all), while it doesn't take much doing for people to think of a bunch of ways that changes to LJ annoy them. LiveJournal is something many people check daily (or hourly, half-hourly, etc.). We all make our own choices about who we trust, what we want to see here, what we're willing to put up with. Most people think that anything to do with the Warren Terra only affects some nebulous "Them," but changes to our blog community are personal, man.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

The mere fact of sponsored communities doesn't bother me so much as the ways unethical marketing departments will be tempted to use the tools they've bought access to. It already seems that sockpuppet accounts have been created just to hype the product and that innocent people have had to deal with accusations of being sockpuppets. While this is far from the first time trust has been eroded by people pretending to be something they're not, it is annoying that the marketeers doing so are rewarded for it by special treatment from SixApart.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Yes. Also, see my latest LJ post for some of my thoughts on it.

[cantinera.livejournal.com]

What happened with The Science of Sleep? I see people alluding to something but I am a clueless dork and missed it. Like usual.

[meretia]

I've tried to care about this, but the way everyone carries on like it's oh noes the end of LiveJournal and the world! whenever there's a newspost just really robs this of any importance to me. Everyone will have forgotten about this whole episode in another two weeks and be carrying on about LJ's next big slip-up.

Despite that, sponsored communities are way lame.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Quoting from one of the posts:

In the coming weeks and months, we'll be launching some new offerings, including:

Sponsored communities: LiveJournal communities run by companies who are looking for a way to connect and interact with people who are interested in finding out more about their products and getting special deals and exclusive content.

...

We launched our first sponsored community, the Science of Sleep movie community (scienceofsleep) a few weeks ago, and there'll be more content from different sponsors in the future.

Basically, someone involved with the movie bought a special new kind of LJ account to advertise. There's a big uproar over how LJ is handling things, and also over how the runners of the new "sponsored community" are doing things. It's kind of a big mess.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, LiveJournal has ended about a zillion times since I got my account. They let people join without an invitation now! We'll be overrun by pathetic losers and the community will be ruined!

That said, I do have definite opinions on many of the changes. (S2: like it. Navigation bar: hate it. Ads on Plus accounts: okay as long as I don't have to see 'em. Tracking feature: cool, very useful when following threads on community posts. Sponsored "communities": so lame. Sockpuppets related to sponsored communities: destroy them all!)