Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

For commercial television, viewers are not the networks' customers, nor are television shows, ultimately, their product. Viewers are the networks' product, and the advertisers who pay big money to reach those viewers are the networks' customers. The programming is just an intermediate step, a byproduct, or,if you will, bait.

Who are Six Apart's (LiveJournal's) primary customers? The writers and readers ("the users"), some of whom, at least until yesterday, paid for additional account features? Or the advertisers vying for the eyeballs of the "Plus" account holders and non-subscriber readers of "Plus"-level journals? (Presumably, LJ would like to consider both groups its customers, but with which group do its loyalties lie? From a business perspective, where should its loyalties lie?)

And what are the ramifications of the answer to that question, with regard to decisions faced by the content creators? An important difference between LJ and television, regardless of the answer to the question in the second paragraph, is that the 'viewers' and the 'production studios' for LJ are the same people.

[ETA: Official response from LJ/SA to the userbase regarding recent/current events was finally posted about the time I thought to start writing this entry. It may affect your reactions to the questions I ask here.]

"In the past it was fashionable to assert that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. In the current era we might say that 'Web 2.0 treats censorship as inspiration and creates performance around it.'" -- Alan Wexelblat, "Web 2.0 vs The Cartel", 2007-05-03

Less insightful/clever but still a useful reminder: "Practically any attempt to sort works of fiction into tidy piles of acceptable and unacceptable material, of course, is likely to invite controversy. Works by noted authors such as James Joyce, Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs have been lauded as masterpieces--and at other times prosecuted as obscene. -- Declan McCullagh, "Mass deletion sparks LiveJournal revolt", CNET News, 2007-05-30