Monetized

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First rule of writing: write what you know.

I write a blog which means I do occasionally read OPB (Other People’s Blogs). And when I read, I often comment.

order screenSo.

I seem to have a couple-three logins at different blogging softwares but they all come back to the gmail account associated with the No Puffin Perspective™. They display my own name and everything, since I don’t snipe anonymously.

A friend sent me a link to a LiveJournal blog today. It started an interesting discussion about ownership and privilege; I logged in to make a comment. LiveJournal gave me a couple of options: LiveJournal itself, Facebook, Twitter, Openid, Google, MailRu, Vkontakte, or Anonymously. I won’t autolink my blogging to Facebook or Twitter because you never know what might end up tweeted on your wall. MailRu, founded by Yuri Milner, is the largest Internet company in the Russian-speaking world. I don’t speak Russian. Ditto for Vkontakte. I’ve never bothered to get an Openid because, well, I have gmail.

So I clicked the GooglePaw and gave LiveJournal my email address, fully expecting to see my name and the North Puffin avatar show up. I saw “ext_1649750” and a crash test dummy.

Went looking for a way to change the avatar. Did so.

Google Plus now probably has a low res bird on my page instead of my smiling mug.

Went looking for a way to change the user name. And that’s where the story gets interesting. LiveJournal is perfectly happy to change my public name from what they assigned to what every other account uses. For $15.

I have a better idea.

I deleted my LiveJournal account and I recommend everyone else do the same.

7 thoughts on “Monetized”

  3. LiveJournal resopnded very quickly:

    Thank you for your inquiry. When you log in using your credentials from another external site such as Google, this creates what is known as an identity account at LiveJournal. It allows you to do a limited amount of things on the site, such as commenting to other entries and posting to communities. While identity accounts normally will display the name used at the external site, Google accounts sometimes will only show the behind-the-scenes username assigned to the account, which is the ext_ username you saw.

    If you want to be able to select your own username, you do not need to pay $15 to do so; you would simply need to upgrade your identity account to a full/actual LiveJournal account. During the upgrade process, you can then select a username of your choosing, up to 15 characters. The upgrade process does not cost anything. The $15 fee is only imposed for full LiveJournal accounts that then decide later that they wish to change their chosen username to something else.

    This may not change your selection to delete your identity account, but I just wanted to explain what had happened. Thank you.

    Regards,
    Brian
    LiveJournal Community Care Team

    That is much better than the policy I found both navigating the site and Googling for “How to change your name.” It’s too bad that everything — including the page that let me change my avatar — lead me to the Pay Here page but kudos to Brian and LiveJournal for explaining it to me.

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