Huh. LJ says my automatic payment failed.

[randomness]

Now I'm trying to decide whether I care if I have a paid account or not.

The only paid account features I use are polls and photos. This is annoying because I would consider doing a poll on this subject if I still could.

Should I renew my paid account, now that they seem to have failed to be able to execute an automatic payment? Or should I go and pay Dreamwidth? The problem with the latter is that the extra effort to log in there with openID probably means polls will have fewer respondents.

On the other hand, the Chinese authorities haven't blocked Dreamwidth yet.

Thoughts?

Comments

[ex_bel786]

If you use LJ Scrapbook a lot, since most of your respondents are on LJ I'd probably say re-up with LJ, since Dreamwidth doesn't have photo hosting (although they're apparently working on it, but I have no problem just keeping my pics on Picasa, which I like better than LJ Scrapbook anyway).

OTOH I also like to encourage people to support Dreamwidth since it's faster and they break things less often, and don't do icky things like LJ's outbound link redirecting. It's hard to get people to come over here though; usually they do for individual reasons rather than as a group.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I'll be curious to hear other thoughts, but I think it'd be nice to punt the question for a year, and see how much time you spend on Dreamwidth (whether it's while you're in China or not).

[cerridwynn.livejournal.com]

I didn't have a paid account for years -- you get photos and polls with a free account with ads. I just started paying this year when they started using pop-ups -- those were really annoying. It's another option, though.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I mostly have a paid account to avoid the ads.

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

I <3 polls, ergo paid account, but I'd be curious about how things work at dreamwidth if you do migrate there.

[amelia-g.livejournal.com]

Ah, the irony.

I've let my paid status lapse, but not for functionality, just because so many fewer people I know still post here.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure why you need to pay either site (unless it's to avoid the ads), but i don't think the China-block should be as big a factor because it's highly likely they'll block Dreamwidth soon. in fact, having blocked the others, i'm surprised they haven't already.

[woodwindy.livejournal.com]

I use this site so much I figure I'm morally obligated to pay at least something, but that's me being weird. YMMV...

Also, check the expiration date on your credit card -- maybe that's the issue with the automatic payment?