No more Mr Nice LJ

Great. For the first time, I'm unhappy with LJ. Not the site per se, but the management behind it. Take a look at this news post which sneaked in something totally under the radar. I had read it yesterday, dismissed it as another one of those crappy pat-ourselves-on-the-back announcements which don't mean anything much, but are harmless. Turns out a lot of LJers read it the same way, till this one comment. All hell broke loose after that, and I'm glad it did.

Check out 's view on this (thanks, ). was quick to respond to the user community with another post, making their position clear.

I have two problems with this. One is of course the fact that it is no longer possible for a new user to have a basic, ad-free account. The second is the sneaky, underhanded way this was announced to the LJ community:

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.

Right.

I had converted to a paid account a couple of months back. Not because I wanted the features offered, but I thought it was time I gave something back to LJ. This is my 7th year running on LiveJournal and I've benefited tremendously. Made some great friends, learnt a lot of interesting stuff, recruited some amazing people and frankly, had something to look forward to when I logged into my computer every day.

None of that changes, of course. But I'm no longer as big a fan of LJ as I was earlier. And I don't think LJ gives a damn.