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LiveJournal Buyout Rumor
Aaron B. Russell writes "Om Malik reports that Six Apart are looking to buy blogging community LiveJournal.com. Rumour? I hope so. I seriously hope so. Neither Six Apart nor Danga Interactive (the company behind LiveJournal) have commented on the situation yet. What impact will this have for the users and volunteers over at LiveJournal? Chris Schmidt, a volunteer at LiveJournal, hypothesizes here(1) and here(2) ." Sources close to LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick say this is just a rumor, and that LJ is not being sold. Update: 01/06 by J : Our sources were way wrong.
Even if something does happen, there's always other LJ variants out there, such as DeadJournal and GreatestJournal if your privacy is concerned.
And as hypothesis #2 states the removal of some features, the other variants will almost always have them.
Livejournal isn't the only journal site out there.
See LJers freak about it here.
The 12 year olds will have nothing better to do with their time. Hummm maybe catch up on some /. ;)
This is my signature.
Most geeks seem to react to hearing "LiveJournal" with something along the lines of "haha, livejournal sucks! it's just a bunch of 12-year-old girls complaining about their parents!" However, the service is quite interesting from a geek perspective: They run a pretty huge web application (700-800 pageviews per second at peak, most of them database-backed), and Brad has written quite a bit about the challenges and solutions they've come up with. They've also written several very interesting open source infrastructure applications like memcached (used by Slashdot) and perlbal. Thus, while the service may not be all that interesting, the tech behind it certainly is (at least to this geek).
Remember eGroups?...
If so you're probably unable to bear, as I am, the take-over-resultant Yahoo Groups interface (I pulled everything I had on there off it), and know just how awful this could be...
-more customizable layouts
-more user icons
-more picture storage
-phone posting
-email posting
-username@livejournal.com forwarding
-http://username.livejournal.com address
-able to create journals for RSS feeds
-(formerly) able to invite free users
-etc. etc.
-mkb
The vast majority of LiveJournal users use it as a sort of melodrama aggregator. It's got all the features of a standard blog, and adds stickers on your locker (avatars), mood rings, and a "friends list" with all the emotional baggage and infighting that entails. It's like being in middle school forever. Note that I'm not against blogs. I honestly think blogs are transformative, and I'm having fun with my own experiment. But for the people who pick LiveJournal for their blog, the reason is almost certainly because all their friends are already on it. If that's not the case for you, you may find it a lonely and somewhat confusing place. (Again, like middle school.)
http://www.livejournal.com/community/show_your_boo bs/ s sy/
http://www.livejournal.com/community/show_your_pu
[insert witty sig here]
Yes I know about those ... but thanks pointing those out.
/. and the past election prove that. Many websites are now just BLOGs with pictures.
I didn't do my homework on Blogger as posts have indicated here.
I think BLOGging is the next big thing - and I think
People expect less from a BLOG - so a lot of flashy HTML and graphics aren't necessary. This is the new webpage boom if you ask me.
Claris Homepage was cool, but not robust. I think Apple could buy out a major player and REALLY promote it heavily.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
LiveJournal is a lot more than most people think.
/.
It is, for instance, a fully-functional RSS aggregator, which means that you can subscribe to and read most major weblogs in your customized "friends list".
LiveJournal also has interest-based communities on every subject under the sun, whether your interest is perl, porn, or just things happening in your neighborhood. Some very well known open source geeks can be found on LiveJournal, including some of the staff of
If you have an interest in languages or travel, LiveJournal has tens of thousands of members in other countries, who can share their unique perspectives with you. I have used LJ to communicate with soldiers in Iraq, and tsunami victims in Thailand. I also use it to read music reviews, download mp3s, amusing videos, torrents, etc.
Above all, it's really simple to avoid LJ drama. Don't be a drama queen, don't befriend drama queens, and if someone leaves an inappropriate comment, ban them from posting again. Most of the people I have on my friends list are very intelligent people. Only a small handful of them are teenagers... so as far as my journal goes, drama simply doesn't exist because I simply chose to not invite it.
Those who think that LJ is just drama and pithy comments just don't know LJ, period.
The only reason I stick with LJ is because of the filtering/locking option, which, to the best of my knowledge, is not available on any other blogging platform. This gives me a lot of control in who exactly can read my posts. If I have to, I can friends-lock the entire journal, keeping random surfers out. The new bundled photohosting for premium accounts is also a nice feature.
LJ is sadly lacking in many areas though: no text search of blog posts or comments; available stock templates are pretty pathetic; only 15 icon slots; no post categorization, etc.