Too many freeloaders?

[charmian]

Jennyo makes a post here about 'freetards' and DW. Her argument is, what is DW going to do if they end up with an ONTD, which she sees as a big financial liability.

http://jennyo.livejournal.com/1048813.html

She says: 'What's so valuable about Dreamwidth that I should pay them to host content that isn't very fannish and isn't gonna get me kicked off by SUP? If I'm creating content I want to monetize/use on a resume, I can't use DW. If I want to read content at work, I can't use DW.'

Why is it that you can't create content that you want to monetize or put on a resume on DW? Why can't you read DW at work? Are you allowed to read Jezebel at work? (I have no idea?) I think though, there IS that aura. LJ is not considered a respectable forum in many industries, although it does seem to be so to some extent in the publishing industry. Blogspot and wordpress.com are. I don't know why this is, but I think it IS a problem (and one that I think could be fixed to some extent by allowing persistent domain name aliasing). (I have no idea what the DW attitude towards professional uses of the site is)

So far, because the policies haven't been published, I'm not sure what Dreamwidth's attitude is towards people who can blog 'professionally.' A lot of the technical needs of media-slash-fanfic-fandom are driven by the way that it is a) often NSFW or b) illegal to sell/of dubious legality. However, in places like anime blogging, a lot of people do put ads on their sites, and there is no legal problem with it because it's not fanfic, but reviews. Has the inability to put your own ads on your own LJ been one of the things contributing to LJ's image as an 'unprofessional' site? Or is it simply because you cannot run a business off of it? (However that is defined)

Now, I guess I'm going to out myself as someone who has a different opinion from media fandom. I don't really care if a site puts ads on my blog, as long as they are up front w/ me doing so and don't put up malware. I don't care if other people want to put ads on their blogs. I know Denise has explained why advertising doesn't work on social networks. But, does it work on forums and blogs? I have no idea.

There is indeed the problem of some users using vastly more resources than others, and what the service does if that happens. In those cases... is there an escape clause saying 'you've moved beyond the limits of shared hosting, you're going to have to either reduce your usage or upgrade'? Or is that all built in?

Comments

[morineko]

On "can you read it at work?"
I can read Gawker Media sites at work. I can read and comment on wordpress.com sites, as well as journalfen.net and dreamwidth.org. I can also intermittently tweet. (I believe the company I work for uses WP and Twitter for commercial purposes, as well as needing someone to do PR work on Gawker blogs.)
I can read, but not comment, at InsaneJournal and Blogspot.
I cannot read LiveJournal, MySpace, or Facebook--as well as a number of large SF-related blogs that are categorized as "social networking or personal sites." I can read about 99% of sports and politics blogs that I've tried to access. note: LJ IS NOT BLOCKED BECAUSE OF FANNISH PR0N. ;)

Ah, adverts work on some blogs, but not others; ask the bloggers. It's really a YMMV situation, because so much of it has to do with pageviews and clickthroughs.

[charmian]

Hmm, I see. I'm not sure how these things work on how the filters work. If something does begin to be used for commercial purposes, it would seem... perhaps it goes through? Yet it would be hard to say that Gawker ain't full of frivolity. Anyway maybe DW should create a 'help people surf at work' option, LOL.

Yeah, I don't really know much about that. I think the problem is that LJ (and forks) exist confusingly on the boundary between social networking and blogging.

[morineko]

It's full of frivolity, but there's also the fact that commenters, iirc, need to be approved first (their commenting policy has always confused me) so there really isn't that networking factor there--it's essentially read-only.

It depends on how an employer has configured their filter. I think LJ may be blocked for reading because it's one of those sticky sites like facebook where once you're in, you'll never leave. this is not so true for the people who refresh kstp.com or the National Weather Service every two hours. ;)

[charmian]

I've never read the comments at the Gawker sites, so I don't know. I wonder what Jennyo meant anyhow? Maybe there is a secret forum that only members can see? Or it's also a soc. networking site?