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

[par_avion]

Maybe LJ should give paid users like a certain amount of virtual gifts for free

LJ does do this sometimes. I've had free v-gift credits appear before (not sure why.)

I've paid for v-gifts before. There was one year where a lot of people sent jellybeans to each other. But I choose not to give LJ money now (I already have a permanent account, so there isn't much I need, but I don't buy v-gifts or paid time for other people anymore.) In recent times, I've only given v-gifts when I had free credits, or they v-gift itself was free.

I would happily purchase v-gifts over here on Dreamwidth.

[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.

[sub_divided]

That was an accident?? Your link only says "in the future we'll restrict giveaways to mutual friends", not that they never meant to offer the gift in the first place.

[charmian]

Read the parent comment XD

/reads through rest of comments. Wow, some people are really.... angry about the lack of a la carte userpics.

[charmian]

Thanks for the info!

[jassanja]

in my flist or dw circle it is pretty common to make v-gifts .. the ones where you take a picture of an fandom/object of the recipients likes, open a graphic manipulation program and slap a text on, then upload it to Scrapbook/flikr/whatever and post it in an entry

does not cost a buck and is more personal then a LJ vgift

I never saw the sense in those, other then being a cash cow for LJ/6A/SUP/whoever ownes it this week

[charmian]

That does sound nicer than an LJ vgift because it's more personalized. Some of the LJ ones are.... not very pretty at all, oddly.