In my last quarter of college, I was part of a group that did an analysis on LiveJournal for our marketing management class. Looking for ways to increase their market share of bloggers, we suggested that they introduce an "Enhanced" free service - supported by banner ads - that would offer more features than the basic free account. One of our deliverables was this ad that LiveJournal would run to advertise the new service.
Remarkably, LiveJournal has introduced a "Sponsored+" service just like our proposed "Enhanced" service.
The features list is similar to the one that we came up with, too. I'd hardly call this unexpected - looking at Livejournal's competition in Xanga and Myspace, we figured that there's a large market willing to put up with some banner ads for LiveJournal's (in our opinion) superior service.
Fancy that - I learned something in school.
demand royalties!
Haha...if only I could...