Which is fine but I think the community expected something different. LJ just announced Sponsored Communities and Sponsored Features. A Community on LJ is a group journal where anyone can post but there is a Maintainer who is in charge. For example the maintainer of the scienceofsleep Sponsored LJ Community, is a person or team who works at Warner Independent Pictures. It might be the same person or team that maintains scienceofsleep on MySpace or scienceofsleep on the Warner movie site.
The thing is, I think LJers expected something different when the time finally came for parent company Six Apart, Ltd to make money from this community. Especially the paid members who were assured in writing that they "will never see any advertising on LiveJournal as long as they're logged in to their account." These users will learn about Amp'd Mobile's policy of "No credit checks, no bills, no promises to keep." but they might wonder if that bit about promises being kept is unique to Amp'd Mobile's marketing slogan. I wonder if LJ administrators could have taken more time to gather consensus from the community and come up with a different sponsorship model.
When Facebook suddenly announced new features that the community did not like, they told users to "calm down." Later, they were forced to apologize and deeply address the issue. Similarly, LJ announced this big news and received a resoundingly negative reaction. LJ representative rahaeli responded by suggesting to the users that they are confused and they need to understand that the new sponsorships are about getting "free stuff!" She went on to tell users "You don't have to use sponsored features" even though they have been asking for this particular feature for years and personally, she can't wait to use it.
