Will an RSS feed from one of your other sites to LJ offend you? (I don't know how their ads interact with feeds.) If that's ok with you, could you pick one source site and supply the feed? Thanks.
I think LJ puts their ads onto an RSS feed, for not-logged-in viewers, but I need to check out what a feed looks like to somebody not logged in -- whether it seems inviting enough that folks would go ahead and read that instead of finding the site it came from, when the convenience of a friendspage wasn't involved. I need to look at that.
I would think that the only practical use of an RSS feed to LJ is to be able to read entries on one's friends page (which means you want to be logged in, but even if you're not you won't be going to the "journal" directly). If I want to navigate URLs one at a time, I can just go to the source. The value of the RSS feed to me is to be able to say "hey, LJ, go gather up all the latest content for me". (I've explored some other RSS options and sometimes use Bloglines, but I find the interface more cumbersome.)
I got around to logging out and checking ... if somebody read by non-LJ-users links to one of my entries on an RSS feed in LJ, their non-LJ-user readers who follow that link will see ads. (Likewise a logged-out LJ user with the RSS feed on their friendslist, following the read-comments link.)
I do not yet know whether that would happen often enough to worry about.
I'll note that it seems to me that asking if you mind if there's an RSS account is a RIDICULOUS question. If RSS is available, you (Glenn) obviously have no control over the reader's choice of ... Reader and to try to impose such control is pretty much useless, unless you're rolling your own and blocking referrers.
I may or may not set up such a feed.
I think "Tell your end-users to use ad-block plus/Pith Helmet/whatever it is that MUST exist for IE" is a fine, fine answer, and I work for an ad-revenue-supported company.
I also think that the days of expecting anyone to provide a successful service for Entirely Free are way over... and so do you, by noting that you're (worried, expecting) that one of your other sites will become too popular and need to sell ads to stay alive.
I wish LJ/6A/SUP coped better, and I still have vague hopes they eventually will, but in the mean time... Yeah, well.
I'll note that it seems to me that asking if you mind if there's an RSS account is a RIDICULOUS question.
I asked if it would offend him, because I want to know that about my friends. I didn't ask his permission, because (as you noted), if RSS is enabled, he can't stop it.
See, I totally fail to grok this... I see it the same as "do you mind if I friend you" - You can't stop it, it's fundamental to the medium, and what's the point? I don't see it as polite... I truly feel that supporting the pov that such a thing is something that the person being friended/feeded/read should be emotionally invested is does nothing but add to The (wow. I meant to misspell that...) Drahmah when the Wrong Person reads the Wrong Thing/adds the Wrong Person/creates the Wrong Feed Account.
It's moot. There's a feed I set up while I was experimenting and still hd a paid account, that I forgot to delete when I could (I don't think I can now), and that I forgot was there until I tripped over it recently. So unless I cut it off from the IJ end, defeating syndication for other uses as well as for LJ, it's there ... and I guess I don't have to finish mking up my mind whether I want it to be there or not. (Not, as you point out, that I could do anything about it other than state an opinion anyhow.)
Had planned to ask just that. Dglenn, I can't imagine a non logged in user would bother with an rss feed if there's another address at which that user can be pointed.
(I think I'm slightly confused about how RSS works; thought paid users created feeds off other sites? Or perhaps it's just that paid users set up LJ feeds from the RSS coming from other sites? )
If a site already publishes an RSS feed (as LJ-clones do), then a (paid/permanent) LJ user can create an LJ subscription to that feed (that is, get LJ to subscribe to the other site's feed and republish that with an LJ ID that can be added to your friends/watch list). The meanings of 'feed' and 'subscription' get a little confusing because of the multiple layers involved.
AFAIK, RSS feeds do not include friends-locked entries. (I do not post locked entries often -- three so far, I think, since I started using LJ -- and as has already been noted, a friends-only entry posted directly to LJ would still not ever have ads on it because only logged-in users could see it; but it's something to be aware of regarding RSS in general.)
I got around to checking an RSS feed into LJ while logged out. The feed's recent-entries page didn't have an ad on it, but that's the view it makes the least sense for anyone to spend time at anyhow. Going to the feed copy of an individual entry, LJ did add an ad. A logged-in LJ user seeing that on their friendspage wouldn't see the ad, nor when they clicked through to the read/leave-comments page for that syndicated entry, but a) a currently logged-out user or a non-user going to the read-comments link (or following a cut-tag) would see ads, and b) a non-LJ-user following a link to the syndicated entry from somebody else's journal would see ads.
I don't know whether that would happen often enough for me to care or not. Neeed mooore daaaata.
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I do not yet know whether that would happen often enough to worry about.
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I may or may not set up such a feed.
I think "Tell your end-users to use ad-block plus/Pith Helmet/whatever it is that MUST exist for IE" is a fine, fine answer, and I work for an ad-revenue-supported company.
I also think that the days of expecting anyone to provide a successful service for Entirely Free are way over... and so do you, by noting that you're (worried, expecting) that one of your other sites will become too popular and need to sell ads to stay alive.
I wish LJ/6A/SUP coped better, and I still have vague hopes they eventually will, but in the mean time... Yeah, well.
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I asked if it would offend him, because I want to know that about my friends. I didn't ask his permission, because (as you noted), if RSS is enabled, he can't stop it.
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(I think I'm slightly confused about how RSS works; thought paid users created feeds off other sites? Or perhaps it's just that paid users set up LJ feeds from the RSS coming from other sites? )
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AFAIK, RSS feeds do not include friends-locked entries. (I do not post locked entries often -- three so far, I think, since I started using LJ -- and as has already been noted, a friends-only entry posted directly to LJ would still not ever have ads on it because only logged-in users could see it; but it's something to be aware of regarding RSS in general.)
I got around to checking an RSS feed into LJ while logged out. The feed's recent-entries page didn't have an ad on it, but that's the view it makes the least sense for anyone to spend time at anyhow. Going to the feed copy of an individual entry, LJ did add an ad. A logged-in LJ user seeing that on their friendspage wouldn't see the ad, nor when they clicked through to the read/leave-comments page for that syndicated entry, but a) a currently logged-out user or a non-user going to the read-comments link (or following a cut-tag) would see ads, and b) a non-LJ-user following a link to the syndicated entry from somebody else's journal would see ads.
I don't know whether that would happen often enough for me to care or not. Neeed mooore daaaata.
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