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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.
If blogs are digital garbage, what does that make Java then?
Mod point free since 2001
If it's "not being sold" like PeopleSoft was "not being sold", well, then, one would guess that they really are being sold.
libertarianswag.com
.. and stuff it with ads.
Maybe the blog menace will go away.
I did my part, now im waiting for yours.
Mood: Gossipy Listening to: Rumours by Keith Sweat You won't believe what I heard today...
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.
Sadly, I fear this will be the end of the LiveJournal Volunteer support system which I strongly support: I met the love of my life via doing support for LiveJournal, and it will be sad to imagine that others will not have that same oppourtunity [sic].
Dang, there go my chances of ever mating in this life. Damn you, Six Apart!
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
See LJers freak about it here.
OH dea, I hope this doesn't mean the end of random, attention seeking girls showing their boobs off to their LJ friends to get comments! Say it ain't so!
As a LiveJournal user who's about to celebrate my journal's 3rd birthday, and who's young and female enough not to be embarrassed about it, I doubt most LJ users will know or care. It would be stupid to make more than minor changes to the interface, and if they do, I'm sure old interfaces will be selectable options (as is the case now). The fact is that the vast majority of LJ users came on when the site stopped requiring invite codes to join and feel very little connection with the LJ community as a whole--certainly, no obligation to become paid members just to support the site, or volunteer as coders, testers, or what not. I honestly don't think any of these people will notice anything beyond interface changes, except "Hey, my journal's loading faster than usual. Sweet!"
/. nerds wants to be associated with online diaries. Eeeeew.
I think it's telling that the blurbs about LJ don't mention that it's open source. Yeah, it's cool when it's an OS or a browser or a media format, but what movement of
I recently got rid of my LiveJournal, and feel a bit relieved. FOr some reason, I found myself spending too much time reading about the percieved(not exactly real) lives of other people who have no bearing on my life. I've been slandered twice on LJ, and in one instance my full name was not used, so I couldn't report them for TOS violations.
That's what's great about livejournal. You can say anything you want, it's only one side of the story, and everyone on your friends list will kiss up to you and agree.
Want to have some fun on LJ? Try to disagree with someone on your friends list, and watch the hilarity ensue.
With interconnected friends networks, gossip can spread like wildfire and all sorts of wonderful sour attitudes towards one another can result.
How would you like it if some LJ using friend of yours decided to tell the world about something you did or didn't do to your embarassment?
I for one can't wait until the blogger bubble bursts.
While LJ toyed with the idea of placing adverts on the free account journals, the idea was discarded. This is largely one of the reasons that I *love* LiveJournal: they offer enough basic services for the majority of users to enjoy the site with free accounts, and enough bonus features to make it worthwhile for a small percentage of users to upgrade and thus cover LJ's costs.
/., I find many of the advertisements obnoxiously tacky and intrusive, and I have no desire to pay for the service, unfortunately.
While I also love
I'll take a guess and guess that LiveJournal is in the top 5 of open source projects. By popular I mean user count.
If you are looking at popularity by name count, it might even rival Linux.
For the sarcasm impaired: this post seems to be a facaetious comment parodying the attitude of the corporate media towards blogs, which is that they're a threat to be bought out and quashed.
Nerds: one way to detect sarcasm is to notice any surprising detail in any statement, like a Slashdotter demanding more ads, and consider whether the statement in a sarcastic tone rather than "straight". Then, compare its effect as sarcasm with its straight effect, and then choose. In fact, you can usually risk responding to a surprising statement as sarcasm with less danger than risking the reverse. Sure, all this sophistication will require practice, but soon you'll have parallelized the processes enough not to miss a beat. And the cynicism that it generates will help you find an apartment outside your parents' basement.
--
make install -not war
I think Apple might have all the rumor sites confused a bit or at least making an omission:
.Mac. Or it could be part of the iWork bundle.
Just as Apple bought Soundjam from Cassidy and Greene to make iTunes, and as they bought Logic to create Garageband and their own pro audio app - I see Apple making a foray into BLOGging and possibly integrating it into
I would imagine they would go after a the biggest - either LiveJournal or Blogger.
I thought I read that the owners of Blogger are big Mac guys.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Slashdot is now reporting on rumors about blogs.
They might as well change the tag line to: "News for supermarket checkout lines, shit that we can neither confirm nor deny."
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).
Many of us are tired about hearing about the latest entry in so-and-so's online diary, and wish they'd just go away.
It seems to be the norm here that people dislike blogs that don't have a "purpose." What exactly is the problem with these? Is anyone here being forced to read blogs about random nonesense? Does it cause some sort of serious problem? If you want to complain about blogs, complain about the ones run by pseudo-intellectuals who feel they should have some sort of say in the world. Most of the livejournal community are just people interested in social networking. Yes, many blogs will just be random bullshit that no one except the poster will ever care about. But, so what? The people flaming blogging in general probably just need somewhere to vent outside of slashdot, a blog maybe?
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...
since it comes with no supporting links.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I've been a 'member' of LiveJournal since 2001. In that time, I've seen many changes to the service, and most of them have been for the better. The server system seems stable (albeit slow sometimes, but outages are rare) and the development team seems extremely closely knit.
I seriously doubt that they will give up the ship so easily, unless they were offered a tremendous sum. There seems to be too much pride in the systems they've coded themselves. It's no small feat to create and maintain a system that houses over a million and a half active accounts. (just check the livejournal.com main page.
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-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
So much of the criticism about blogging that I have seen seems to be embodied in LJ. Most of the real blogs I have seen that use WordPress or MovableType seem to be done by people who are at least semi-serious about what they write. Most MT users I have seen, for example, put at least a modicum of thought into what they write and it's rarely about their life unless it affects the direction of the blog or is amusing to the readers.
LJs are appropriate for people who want to help people in their lives who are far away keep up with what's going on in their life and stuff like that. They don't seem to be very useful for much else. Blogs on the other hand tend to be focused on issues like politics, coding, music, etc.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The entire purpose of having a journal online is to share it with others. While I don't post every miniscule thought, reaction, or whine, I do record what recent experiences I found to be either interesting, insightful, or funny - sound familiar??
And I do enjoy reading entries written by my real life friends who also use LiveJournal or some other blog. It's a good way to catch up with many friends within a few minutes without having to wait for a reasonable hour of the day and picking up a phone to find out. The benefits of using a blog service such as livejournal are recording key moments in one's life... and being able to share them with friends - if you... have any.
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.)
hehe, I'd rate that last post as a 5 for funny. Livejournal, IMO, is only useful if you have REAL-LIFE friends who use it too. So if you're friends are actually beyond the maturity of a middle-schooler, and you only add them as your livejournal friends - then it's all good. As far as the service goes I have no major complaints. The web design/interface as previously mentioned by another /.'er is unwieldy and difficult. There are other services just as good.
This does do a good job of keeping you up to date with friends and family that you would otherwise contact and talk to via instant messenger, phone, or .. in person. *gasp* This is just another medium to do such a thing, IMO.
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
I'm not trolling here before I do get flamed, however who gives a monkeys.
What relevance does a blog have to most people. I find them annoying and they tend to have people bitching about their mates etc.
Any sensible person wouldn't post that they had done x on a blog unless they were trying to tell the world.
People who weblog are craving attention from the rest of the world.
Sorry but go get a diary and write in in there.
(In case you hadn't noticed, yes I hate bloggers)
I'll have to second that.
I suppose that if all your friends are snot-nosed whiners, then I LJ might look like a universe of snot-nosed whiners. But in my case, most of my friends are quite level headed.
LJ is a great way for groups of people to stay in touch. It offers a communication medium that email, "ICQ" and usenet don't match up to. It really is a nice medium for keeping in touch with friends and family.
The big "danger" though is that you are relying on a comapny to store your data for you, and that company can be sold and your data destroyed or used for purposes that you did not intend at any time.
I've been getting my personal website fixed up lately and have decided that I am going to post mainly to my own website from now on and merely provide links to it in lj. That way, even if LJ vaporizes tomorrow, I'll still have my data which I can link back to in another forum if I need to.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
http://www.livejournal.org/download/code/
If 6A screw it up, we just make our own!
He, maybe my LJ client will never get finished now, they'll probably shut down the API.
#include <sig.h>
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.
Here is the FAQ dealing with archiving journals. I really don't think that having a CSV or XML file with the entries around is "not easy". One thing the FAQ seems to hint at is that you don't get the comments attached to the post. Unlike (apparently) a lot of other LJers, my LJ is by me, for me, and everyone else can choose to read it or not (that is to say, comments aren't why I keep a LJ). So in that respect, I'm like you - I don't care about traffic.
Point is: no you aren't screwed if they get bought out, and considering that LJ is Brad Fitz's baby, I think this is all romourware anyway.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?