LJ notification problems, free virtual gifts?

[charmian]

Recently, LJ has been suffering from problems with their notification system. (they seem to have fixed it; I just received a notification) (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_maintenance/126582.html) So, if you're not receiving any notifications, this is why. Some people seem to be complaining in the comments about the situation, even though luckily, it appears that data hasn't been lost. Some claim that recently LJ has been having very poor uptime of basic features, but I guess I haven't noticed because I don't post at LJ much anymore and don't use many of the features, and so would be less inclined to notice.

Anyhow, in other recent news, it appears that LJ accidentally caused a virtual gift to be made available for free, so lots of people were sending them out. It is claimed, however, that this contributed to the notification problem.

So from this, it seems that people are willing to send out Virtual Gifts, they simply think that $1.00 is too high a price for them. (Or maybe any price? How elastic are these things?) Maybe LJ should give paid users like a certain amount of virtual gifts for free (which may encourage people to buy virtual gifts to reciprocate given gifts) or create an alternate means by which people may earn "money" for virtual gifts? I really wonder how much money LJ is currently making with the virtual gift system.

[EDIT: Here's where a staff member explains that it was a glitch and shouldn't have been offered for free: http://community.livejournal.com/lj_maintenance/126582.html?thread=11661430#t11661430 ]

Comments

[foxfirefey]

LJ used to partner with Peanut Labs. Users could take a survey. LJ'd get about $2 for a survey, and give $1 in a gift certificate credit they could use for vgifts and whatnot.

http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/56672.html

The partnership ended at some point for unknown reasons.

[charmian]

Thanks for the info!