So what is that thing?
Saturday, October 17th, 2009 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianOn LJ news, someone posted that there was a $100 Virtual Gift. It seems to have something to do with this comm, which appears to be about making a model city or something? Someone else suggested that this was a bulk gift of a sort or had something to do with mobile usage of LJ. In any case, I don't read Russian, so I have no idea.
I've often wondered about virtual gifts... like who buys these things? Why? Why not just make a picture on your own and send it to people? There are free e-greeting cards and all. Is it just the gesture of "I spend money on you, even if it's to buy you a little picture that is of no practical use and that probably no one else will even see"? It would make more sense to like... buy them paid time or something, or buy them something on their Amazon wishlist or whatever. I suppose these things aren't aimed at me?
I've often wondered about virtual gifts... like who buys these things? Why? Why not just make a picture on your own and send it to people? There are free e-greeting cards and all. Is it just the gesture of "I spend money on you, even if it's to buy you a little picture that is of no practical use and that probably no one else will even see"? It would make more sense to like... buy them paid time or something, or buy them something on their Amazon wishlist or whatever. I suppose these things aren't aimed at me?
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Date: 2009-10-18 07:03 am (UTC)Oooh, now that would be a fun thing, an element that could be included in the style, to show the most recent n vgifts in a little box if they were still active, so someone who gets them often could showcase them.
When LJ implemented them, there were a lot of people grumpy because it was a fairly transparent shameless moneygrubbing stunt, except that LJ didn't exactly own up and say it was shameless moneygrubbing.
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Date: 2009-10-18 07:14 am (UTC)Eh, they seem fairly unobjectionable. No one is being forced to buy those things, and people can display whatever stuff they want to on their profiles already. I wonder if it was worth the effort (programmer-hours) of creating them though. (Since of course, like all LJ users I think my use of the site is typical of everyone's, from my perspective it seems like no one uses them)