Basic accounts

"Ads? Not in my goddamn Livejournal!"

Basic accounts are a form of account no longer offered by Livejournal. When this change in policy wasn't announced by SUP in a timely manner, the ensuing lulz took over the Livejournal news feed.

Some History

At least 100 years ago, Livejournal offered two kinds of accounts: Paid and Free. After realizing how much money he could make on it, Livejournal creator Brad sold Livejournal to Six Apart, much to the dismay and horror of users everywhere.

Six Apart's LiveJournal (which many dramaticians saw as the long-awaited return of SALJ), started their long and notorious history of infuriating Livejournal's userbase by offering a new type of account: Plus. Free accounts became Basic and Paid accounts remained the same. Plus accounts offered more features, but shat all over a user's journal with ads.

In the time since, basement dwellers everywhere have been beating drums to the song of oppression and cruelty practiced by SixApart's policies, including The Great LJ Outage Of 2006 and The Great Livejournal Strikethrough of 2007.

What Happened

After a long, embittered battle with their own users, the Livejournal staff soon realized that they were running out of money for hookers and blow. They needed to think of a new way to pull in some cash, quick. It wasn't long before they thought of a solution.

In early 2008, a new post announced the 100-day anniversary of SUP's ownership of Livejournal, including a tiny mention about a streamlined account creation process.

	“	Other changes you may have noticed are the logged-out homepage and registration process for new users. We streamlined and simplified things so that now it’s faster and easier than ever to create a LiveJournal account.	„
	—theljstaff, painfully unaware that users would soon catch on

Soon after realizing that they had, in fact, been had, many users started commenting demanding explanations. Comments included speculation that SUP may or may not be the Russians who own LJ, others demanded a full explanation. When one was offered by the VP of Product Development, he was flamed by the hordes of butthurt tinfoil hats screaming for the Livejournal staff's blood. Once again showing that the staff have no understanding of the internets, he complained about personal attacks after the second or so response to his comment.

	“	I think the personal attacks are a bit much, I'm happy to comment here as long as this is a reasonable conversation.	„
	—jasonshellan, completely unaware of the nature of the internet

24 hours later, the Livejournal staff suffered Troll's remorse and made another news post trying to clarify the new changes in policy. Swearing that they didn't want to "undermine the culture of LiveJournal" (as though Livejournal somehow has a culture beyond bacteria), they promptly tried to explain their new position.

Shortly after the whole clusterfuck of crazy exploded, Russian news site CNews covered the affair, going so far as to ask SUP's head of blog department Anton Nosik about why he made the changes. He replied with his deeply insightful understanding of the blog market, while tipping his hand about LJ's future policy.

Some speculate that in the future, the friends only option will require an additional fee per post.

Content Strike 2008

BAAAAWWWWWWW.

Feeling as though somehow they're going to make a difference, Livejournal's many fandoms declared a one-day content strike, stating that for a single day they won't post any entries or comments to Livejournal. While everyone else wishes they would make this permanent, the outlook on actual change is grim.

Accounts That Are Still Offered

• Paid
• Plus

See also

• Livejournal
• LiveJournal Caste System
• The Great LiveJournal Buyout of 2007
• Six Apart

Links

• The original post
• One inquisitive user catches on
• An explanation?!
• I'm new at this "internets" thing...
• OH WHAT THE FUCK
• This is where the real money is at
• Oh LOL
• Abolition of Basic Accounts -- Brad reacts!
• Abolition of Basic Accounts -- SUP reacts!
• The follow-up
• At least it was posted to the correct community.

Basic accounts is part of a series on LiveJournal Visit the LiveJournal Portal for complete coverage.