Please consider an InsaneJournal account. Permanent Accounts on sale now.

[vakkotaur]

You might have noticed the mess that LiveJournal/SUP has inflicted on itself. If you're thinking about getting an alternate or backup account someplace, InsaneJournal has an excellent reputation. You can get a permanent account at IJ today (well, for 24 hours, not sure how many hours to go) for $75. That's higher than the usual IJ rate as 50% will be donated to the Safe Harbor Animal Rescue which had a fire. See here. Even so, that $75 is still only half or less what an LJ permanent account would cost if they were ever offered again, and IJ treats its users as people rather than commodities as LJ does.

Even if you don't go for the permanent account, please consider getting an IJ account anyway. It is looking to me like LiveJournal is approaching the tipping point of killing itself. It won't happen right this instant, but if LJ/SUP continues on its current path, which seems all too likely, I don't expect it too last more than several months in the form that people have come to know and expect.

Comments

[badjahsensei.livejournal.com]

The mess seems to be one of eliminating plus accounts, pushing new accounts to the basic level--an account with ads.

So I just went and made an IJ, just to check it out. I chose the free level.

Ads. Not only ads, but ads based on what looks like things found in my cookies. Not really the most privacy-friendly in my book...

It looks like IJ has the same account options that LJ has now, so I'm not really feeling it there...

If the "great" fandom revolt didn't kill LJ, this won't. They still have the user base. People have tried to move their friends to other services, and they wind up back here...

...and if a few people leave, that's more bandwidth to make the service faster for me. :)

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

No, this by itself will not kill LiveJournal, though I suspect it will be bigger than the "fandom revolt" as it affects more people than a subculture. What I fully expect to follow just might. Eventually the elasticity runs out and things snap. My idea of when that happens is probably off, and it is just possible that LJ/SUP will figure out things before they break them.

I haven't seen the ads on IJ in some time, having sprung for the permanent account level a while ago. What I do see is that in the announcements group, people are being properly informed of pending changes, and often asked about them beforehand.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

LJ did the opposite: they replaced Basic (totally free -- no ads, no money needed) with Plus (ad supported).

Your experience with the ads is a fundamental flaw that I attribute to one root cause: JavaScript abuse. I do realize that just because you can run noscript (if you're using Firefox) or disable JavaScript doesn't make things any more correct. Also, if your browser has the ability, force all cookies to be session cookies and only allow cookies to persist from sites that you trust.

At least on LJ, since ads are served via JavaScript from third parties, noscript kills them dead, leaving blank label scars on the page. ;o)