(from the perspective of a previously-paid user)

I’ve had my Livejournal account since 2001, and been a paid member since July, 2001. Tabard @ lj has seen both very active and very inactive periods. It has also seen me through some of the most miserable times I can remember. Those days, I gladly shelled out $25 a year — a pittance, really, weighed against the benefits I received in both services rendered, and the connections with friends I was able to build through the lj community. For a long time, Livejournal was the brightest part of my internet experience.

I haven’t posted actively on Livejournal since I started blogging here on my website, so the changes they’ve made recently don’t have any great affect on me. But after observing over the last couple years the deteriorating state of an online service that helped me through really bad times, I’ve decided I’m going to stand up with the rest of the Lj community. Since my blog here is syndicated on Livejournal, I will not be posting from midnight tonight until midnight the following night. Nor will I be posting commentary of any kind. The people in charge don’t seem to listen when the Lj community is saying something, so maybe they’ll listen when we don’t.

The problems seemed to start when blog-world mogul SixApart bought Livejournal in January ‘05. (I won’t say Lj creator Brad Fitz “sold out” because I don’t know what sort of circmstances brought about the sale, and I’m willing to say that Lj might have become a lot for a small company like Danga to handle.)

Included in the above-linked Lj news post, was this list (my emphasis added):

Why is Six Apart buying LiveJournal?
Lots of reasons:

• Our companies are more alike than different.
• We both use Perl.
• Together we form super robot that’s stronger than the sum of its parts.
• Super robots can fight super companies.
• They respect us, we respect them.*
• We have a number of features they don’t.
• We have experience with making “inward-facing” community sites, whereas their sites/products tend to be “outward-facing”. They want some of that inward-facing action.**
• Because we’re awesome.

What would be more interesting is why they’re NOT buying LiveJournal: they’re not buying the site to spam you, screw you, destroy the community, or convert you en massé to their other paid services***. They just want to double our efforts and have a part in all types of blogging.

* I can only guess that this only really referred to the relationship between 6A and the developers of Livejournal, and not in any way to the relationship between 6A and the Lj community. Somewhere in there 6A apparently forgot (or maybe never realized at all?) that the community makes Livejournal. Lj is its community.
** “Inward-facing” would imply, to me at least, that the services geared toward the community, and the integrity of that community should come first. 6A’s inexperience in the “inward-facing” arena seems apparent.
*** Whatever SixApart’s position was on this particular claim, SUP apparently doesn’t exactly agree. By discontinuing Basic Accounts, they are forcing new users, as well as current users creating new accounts, to either just put up with the ads or break out their wallets. It’s at least a little heartening to see that some of the devs aren’t pleased with this decision.

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