Wholesome 8===D

I sent this to suggestions just now. I thought I'd share it for those who might be interested.

Short, concise description of the idea
To allow ad revenue sharing for paid users (permanent accounts holders, and early adopters), add a second version of the print_ad function that will allow paid users to pass their AdSense code to it which then replaces livejournal's code when the ads are displayed on their personal journal. Function prototype, and how it would be called:

function builtin print_ad(string type, string adSenseCode) [fixed] 
"Prints an ad if the user should see one, 
using an adsense code specified by the journal owner.";

To be called like so...

 $p->print_ad("Journal-Skyscraper", "ca-pub-5788891423790015"); 

Full description of the idea
Allowing paid users (and the like) to share ad-revene or to post ads on their accounts has been suggested by myself, and others, more others, and even on the O'Reilly Blog. From conversation with pmmarcov, I was told it wouldn't be implemented because it would be too difficult to justify the benefit. What I've suggested is a simple and parsimonious approach that would allow all paid users, using S2 who can get an AdSense account, the ability to "share" revenue from the livejournal ads feature while not violating the principles already in place (in terms of what users when logged in can see the ads, etc). There would be no extra accounting issues for LiveJournal to deal with, and it would shut-up nagging users like me who WOULD REALLY LIKE this feature. :)

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

• None that I can think of.

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

• This will involve searching for and then replacing a text string.

bradfitz recently posted in lj_biz about creating a "third user level" (fourth if you consider early adopter accounts) for livejournal where "free users" can get most of the features of paid users but they'll have ads on some of their pages. There's a bunch of cavets that ensure if you want to your livejournal experience to be ad-free, this change should be transparent. You should go read it.

For the most part I think it's a reasonable idea. But I did offer a friendly amendment in the comments (shown below, somewhat edited).

I haven't read all the comments yet, so my apologies if this has already been suggested. Anyway, my initial reaction to this was "BUT, I JUST PAID FOR A YEAR SUBSCRIPTION A FEW DAYS AGO!" Then I started thinking one thing that might be cool (and mitigate similar concerns) is to allow paid users to have ads on their site and share a percentage of the revenue generated from those ads -- 50/50 or whatever seems logical when you and six-apart run the spreadsheets. That way paid users will all have the potential to become bajillionares through livejournal, and free users will be able to use all of livejournals features for free.

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/236361.html?thread=7344713#t7344713

Feel free to comment under that thread if you like my idea.