According to the most recent LJ announcement, the flap over losing Basic accounts has born fruit. LJ will not be reinstating the option to register a new Basic Account, but instead will offer the ability to downgrade to a Basic Account, via the Manage Account page, as of August 28, 2008. As for advertising for Basic account holders, it will be displayed to visitors who are not logged in to LiveJournal at the time when they are looking at Basic Account journals and communities. Basic account holders will not see ads on any Basic journal or community they view (including their own) while they are logged in. However, as before, Basic accounts have less functionality as well as fewer features than a Plus account.
In response to this, the vocal and obsessive LJ community showed that, as usual, they have no understanding of the business world and complained about it. Seriously, what a bunch of whiners.
In other financial news, for the month of September, LJ will offer a 20% off sale on Paid accounts. Details of the sale will be posted on an upcoming
news update, August 28th. Also, there will be a Permanent Account sale in November. 