sad
czircon writes:LiveJournal is really going to shit lately. The "sponsored communities" are bad enough; now we have to put up with ads on the front page as well? And not just banner ads, but ads with Flash and fake forms to fill out because they think it's more likely to trick you into clicking on it? Ugh. Unfortunately I'm pretty much stuck here.*sigh* I feel ya on the ads. (Not necessarily on sponsored communities, if done right...)
You don't know how much I've fought against ads on the homepage. I'm all for ads when users want them, can tolerate them, and tell us so by choosing the advertising level. If ads are a better deal for them than paying money, great!
But ads on the front page affect paid users and "Basic" users who don't want ads because they have to see them when they're logging in. It also taints the image of the site in the eyes of new users who wouldn't otherwise know LiveJournal is different. Flashing Flash ads on the front page? Sure, we're different.
Any short-term revenue gains don't make up for the long-term losses (interrelated: users, paid accounts, advertising volume) due to loss of "cool" image and jacking with long-time users, IMO.