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SixApart Sells LiveJournal to Russian Media Company
molrak writes "SixApart tonight announced the sale of journal/blogging service Livejournal to Russia-based SUP. Original LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick has chimed in on the situation: 'This is pretty cool because - They're ridiculously excited about LiveJournal, and have been for awhile (they previous purchased advertising rights in Russia, but ended up doing a bunch of Russia-specific LJ development as well). They want to throw a lot of resources at LiveJournal in terms of product development and engineers. "LiveJournal.com, Inc." now stands alone again, focusing on nothing but LJ. Sounds like I'll have more LJ influence (via new role as advisory board member) than I've had recently.'"
Will that mean LiveJournal will write us from now on?
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Does this mean that any anti-Putin blogging will be noted and passed on to the "proper" authorities?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I predict that 50% of the comments here will be thinly-veiled racial attacks on Russia.
The other 50% will be "in soviet russia" jokes, of course...
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
So, um. What kind of a corporate culture are these guys bringing in? Given the readiness with which the Putin government has been putting the boots to dissension (particularly in terms of media), I have to worry (because I don't have all the information) that increasingly Draconian laws over there might spill over into how the LJ TOS is adjudicated in general.
So paid account users are sending their money to... Russia?
It seems like +85% of LJ pages are Russian anyways, so this makes sense.
...now, it's Russia. Guys, the Russians are coming! These two countries are gobbling up our [American] companies fast!
What will be interesting to see is whether the filtering and censorship of LJ will be more or less stringent than it was previously.
Earlier this year we had uproar due to fanfic heavy accounts being blocked and assorted accusations regarding slashfic being porn and potentially kiddie porn in the case of Harry Potter fic.
I wonder if moving out of the US juristriction for the 'publisher' will affect the degree in which copyright violations are pursued.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Totally my personal experience when I proclaim there are extremely talented software engineers in Russia that are under-utilized in the global market. I will definitely be watching closely. Maybe some others can share their experiences?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
To those of us in the United States, this opens up a whole new experience...while most of the world uses widespread blogging sites and social interaction sites based here in America, for once OUR denizens will be reading their friends lists and syndicated feeds, and writing their thoughts, impressions, and pictures of their drunken selves regurgitating in public (sorry, that's facebook) on servers hosted in another country. All of a sudden we will be forced to *gasp* interact with the world around us.
This also may sharpen questions as to whether a person writing in one country is subject to the laws of the country in which the content is stored. When it affects us, then we wake up.
Meanwhile....cue the 144-page GAWDDAMMIT, KEEP THEM COMMIE RED BASTARDS' HANDS OFFN MAH LAHVJURNL followups to the official LJ announcement in 3...2...1...
I went to high School with Brad, and I developed the first Mac version of the LJ client. It's crazy to see where it's gone.
Comparing LJ to Myspace or Facebook is like comparing Wordpress to MS Outlook.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
....expect odd charges apearing in 3,2,1...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
So I'm sure a lot of American Slashdotters are thinking: "What? A Russian Company buying an American Company? Where did they get the dough?"
From : http://www.econstats.com/weo/V012.htm
Share of World Economy %
country 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
United States 21.68 21.34 21.13 20.97 20.85 20.71 20.57
Russia 2.36 2.42 2.46 2.55 2.60 2.66 2.69
Italy 3.22 3.20 3.12 3.01 2.91 2.84 2.79
France 3.34 3.33 3.27 3.17 3.10 3.04 2.98
Spain 1.81 1.82 1.81 1.78 1.75 1.72 1.70
China 10.92 11.47 12.07 12.68 13.18 13.59 13.99
India 5.45 5.54 5.65 5.83 5.91 6.05 6.17
I wish this chart went back further to really accentuate how much has changed over the past 15 years. The point being... Slowly but surely the world economy is getting more evenly distributed around the globe.
If you look at the backstory for the rise of SUP, the whole thing started when the abuse team tried to apply American standards to Russian bloggers. You see, the Russian internets culture is different. You post whatever you want to post. For example, if you feel that you want to personally execute every member of [insert group of people here], burn the corpses in a fire, and piss in the ashes, then you should definitely blog about it. Self-censorship is for wimps and politicians. A few years ago, American lj abuse members attempted to ban some Russian bloggers (for posting something about murdering NATO soldiers, iirc). The Russian blogosphere exploded in indignation, and the lj management decided that the only way to sort out what was going on with its Russian-speaking users was to offload them to a Russian company. Hence, SUP, which acquired the rights to the Russian-speaking part of lj last year - and now, has bought the whole service.
If the behavior that SUP has found acceptable in its segment of lj is anything to go by, lj filtering and censorship may be set to disappear entirely.
In 2006, when SUP was put in charge of handling LJ's Russian userbase (which was defined, if I remember correctly, as "everyone in the former Soviet Union or anyone who blogged in Cyrillic at all"), there were howls of rage from the Russian community for that specific reason. "SUP = FSB" was a pretty common refrain in comments of the announcement.
Considering a lot of Russian LJ users were on the site precisely because it was, if not completely out of Moscow's reach, at least more difficult to readily get at, I can understand why they'd be furious about that - and moreso about this.
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Here's some of the dirt on SUP:
http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/tag/sup
This is basically going to mean that LJ, which was in a good position as an unincorporated open source project and a somewhat uncared for and misunderstood position under Six Apart, is being sold to a shoddy and inconsistent company an ocean away from half of its userbase. There is no guarantee that LiveJournal's new owners will take as good care of the seven years of information (ranging from useless to invaluable) its users have saved up.
Let this stand as a warning to new community start-ups: pick who you deal with wisely, because once you sell there's no going back.
MySpace has journal-keeping features, communities, and friends lists. It can be justly compared to LiveJournal.
I don't think Six Apart ever really knew exactly what to make of LJ
I'm not entirely sure LJ ever really knew exactly what to make of LJ.
New Shimmer may be a floor wax and a dessert topping, but LJ will always be trying to shoehorn blogging and social networking into the same box.
JWZ will have to write blog in Russian now?
http://jwz.livejournal.com/
Im not so sure about the servers moving, sounds more like mainly money (and maybe people..?). From TFA: "SUP has launched an American company, LiveJournal, Inc., to manage and operate LiveJournal globally." Note the word American in that sentence.
Umm, from that site's data, Russia's share has _fallen_ over the last 26 years; from a high of almost 5% to today's 2.69%.... And USA has been flat at around 21% the entire time; China grew from 3% to 14%, India from 3% to 6%... And France, Spain and Italy have taken minor falls from 4-ish percent to 3-ish percent over that time... How does that equate to "getting more evenly distributed"?
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Um, you're flat out wrong.
First of all, the stats do go back 26 years, and if anything, it shows the Russian economy has shrunk almost by 1/2 in the last 26 years (4.68% in 1980, 2.69% in 2006, decrease of 42.5%), while the U.S. economy has stayed about the same (21.40% in 1980, 20.57% in 2006, decrease of less than 4%) in terms of percentage of world economy.
Other notables:
(Troll hat on)
Well it's not like the Russian mafia could be any worse at customer relations than Six Apart anyhow.
Very nice, very nice.
How much ?
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Golos and its supporters have been maintaining a blog page at LiveJournal. You can read either the actual blog page in Russian or the English translation of the blog page. It contained plenty of damning evidence showing that the Kremlin had manipulated the election.
Then, after the election concluded, a Moscow-based company acquired LiveJournal. Is the timing merely coincidence or is the Kremlin somehow connected to this business deal?
I've a Last LJ 50 Pictures site bookmarked, to see at random what atrocities they're posting. Interestingly, when clicking one of the images, most of the LJ posts linked to were written in Russian. So I'm not really surprised that it's a Russian company who bought it.
Just remember, there's been a lot of malware coming out of Russia lately, particularly from the Russian Business Network. Will LiveJournal's new owners start giving us free popups and keyloggers as surprise gifts? Too early to know for certain, but this deal moves them a bit closer to RBN's arena, and zombifying LJ's userbase would be a big feather in their cap.
Block your Flash and Javascript, just in case. 'Course, that's good advice no matter where you surf.
Came to this late, so not sure if anyone who actually knows anything about LiveJournal in Russia or the Russian media has posted above. LiveJournal IS blogging in Russia, almost literally. Its acronym ZheZhe, for ZhivoiZhurnal, is what blogs are called generically. It has also proven relatively influential in a country where the television and major print media are under strict Kremlin control. Not as in the old Pravda days of one message one source, but with set themes to promote (temnyki), blacklists, and a long list of unmentionable topics.
Less than 20% of the Russian population is online, but outbreaks of support for otherwise ignored cases on LiveJournal have actually made it to mainstream prominence. Liberal groups (and others) have used it for organizing. All this was more than enough to set off the alarm bells of the Kremlin media masters. There have already been many cases of direct repression of bloggers and other web presences online (not just on ) using the broad extremism act. The Kremlin is wary of broader action because they don't want to make enemies of the active Russian internet community.
That's not the Putin model anyway, while what just happened to LiveJournal is exactly that. The annoying and/or potentially useful media entity is acquired by someone with tight Kremlin connections. Disloyal staff are replaced. Slowly or quickly, negative content about Putin and his administration disappears. Discussion is allowed as long as it doesn't cross the invisible line. The Putin regime has raised this to an art form, studying how the authoritarian governments of Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine were toppled (all with a similar blueprint) and taking preventative action. The internet wasn't really much of a factor in those cases but with the increased penetration these days the Kremlin isn't taking any chances. They won't care about blogs not in Russian. Intimidation and a chilling effect is the point. The best repression is the kind you don't have to back up.
Despite its overwhelming control, the Putin power structure is brittle and they have to figure out how to transition this power monopoly come the March 2, 2008 presidential elections. It's no coincidence that this move "against" LiveJournal comes now. It was a potential loose end that can now be bullied, or snipped off if necessary. Notices go out to all publishers/editors/reporters/users telling them they must comply with all laws, including the extremely vague act against extremism the regime uses to confiscate materials and harass critics across the country.
The internet in Russia is in a precarious state. If it were more widespread and more heavily used as alternative media it would attract the Kremlin attention it has largely escaped so far. Other than the DDOS attacks opposition sites are hit by on a regular basis. (A la the Estonian sites during their diplomatic row with Russia. Our Russian sites kasparov.ru and namarsh.ru get hammered regularly.)
The optimists and Putin apologists inside and outside of Russia have been proven wrong again and again. Of course he won't... and he does. He doesn't care how something looks to the West as long as it doesn't affect his bottom line and the grasp on power. They have a huge amount of money at stake, the only thing he and his gang really care about. LiveJournal is just another piece in the game.
Saludos, Mig Greengard
Editor, http://theotherrussia.org/
Prominent Russian bloggers are already leaving LJ - or at least opening their blogs elsewhere (greatestjournal, blogspot etc.)
26 years ago there was no Russia. There was Soviet Union.
Soviet Union = Russia + Ukraine + Belarus + Lithuania + Latvia + Estonia + Kazakhstan + Uzbekistan + Tajikistan + Turkmenistan + Kyrgyzstan + Azerbaijan + Armenia + Georgia + Moldova
All your content are belong to us?
The company running LJ - LJ, Inc - will continue to be an American company and most likely hosted here. It will just be *owned* by a Russian company.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
to us
Especially since it's the HUMAN RACE. If you're going to make bad remarks about an ethnic group, you're an ethnicist, not a racist.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
No, it's more like comparing The Bat! to MS Outlook.
how does it go? oh yeah... in Russia We own LiveJournal :)
whats next on the shopping spree list before dollar is on a paper roll :)
Dont Judge The situation by the Misfortunate. Goga.
And I'm sure a lot of Slashdotters around the world are thinking:
What does a single country's share of the world economy tell us about any single company in that country? Why can't a Russian company buy LiveJournal? Why couldn't an Estonian or Honduran company buy LiveJournal? Why couldn't Kim Jong-Il buy it?
Those statistics tell you very little about the economies of each country -- including purchasing power, per-capita GDP and income, imports, exports, government vs. private sector revenues and spending, corporate & individual tax rates, employment, foreign investment, etc.
Putin is doing wonders for the economy. Russia is one of the fastest developing countries on the planet, and will continue to grow that way for at least the next 5-10 years. The reason Russia is controlled by one party is because that one party is doing wonderful things for the average living standards of people across the country.
Yes, I've heard he really got the trains running on time.
Da Blog
Did anyone else misread this as Russian Mafia Company?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it