

LiveJournal Lays Off San Francisco Staff, Will Operate From Moscow - allenbrunson
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-livejournal-lays-off-majority-of-us-staff-will-operate-from-moscow/

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ConradHex
Just to be clear, not all the SF staff were laid off.

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allenbrunson
a sad day. seems like nobody knows what to do with the thing since brad
fitzpatrick removed himself from day-to-day operations.

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gaius
To be fair Brad didn't either; that's why he sold it.

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allenbrunson
recalling what he wrote about the sale at the time, it seemed like he enjoyed
the coding, but was not happy about all the administrivia it took to keep the
site running. he felt he was passing off all the boring parts of the job to
six apart.

must not have worked out that way though, because he didn't stay at six apart
very long. i vaguely recall him writing something about how he'd been doing
livejournal so long that it had finally gotten tedious for him, and he was
ready for something else. could be true, or it could be that things didn't
work out with six apart the way he'd hoped.

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tptacek
I don't understand the attraction of LiveJournal in the era of Wordpress,
Facebook, and Twitter. Was it a sad day when they started winding down
Friendster?

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mdasen
It's big in Russia
(<http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/Picture%20360.jpg>) and so you do
get a network affect.

And LiveJournal became really popular with certain subcultures. You're able to
do friends-only entries, there's a login system for comments and such for your
friends, etc. Great for someone who hates the world and wants to share it with
a few others. It also allows you follow others on LJ in a way that you can't
with Facebook and that Wordpress requires RSS/Atom. It appeals to some. Not
everyone wants a public blog (WP), not everyone wants the randomness of
Facebook's feed, not everyone wants a 140 character limit. . .

Facebook's real names thing can deter some postings and its closed nature
means you don't get random subcultures becoming prevalent as much as you get
more mainstream stuff. Twitter isn't a competitor really and Wordpress doesn't
have the same features of authentication, friends, etc.

LJ doesn't appeal to me, but I can see why it does for some.

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tptacek
A network effect implies that you get more value from using it the more people
do use it. But LiveJournal is just a blog. I can read anyone's LiveJournal
without joining.

AIM, on the other hand, you have to join to use, which is why we're all still
running the ridiculously baroque OSCAR protocol.

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allenbrunson
no, you _cannot_ read anyone's livejournal without joining. many people make
some or all of their entries friends-only, which can only be read by people on
their friends list.

it's features like this one, and many others, that make connectedness with
friends much stronger than on traditional blogging platforms.

~~~
mdasen
To add a bit, LJ users can leave comments attached to their accounts and so
comments become "by someone" in a way that blog comments aren't always.
Likewise, you can look through the friends lists of people you're friends with
and see if you like their stuff. It's not a great network affect like AIM or
Facebook, but it's definitely there.

~~~
raffi
I have a lifetime account on livejournal. An LJ friend actually bought it for
me (I was very surprised). I love the service and use it as an online diary.
It has novelty to those of us who want that. Plus some of us started with it
many years ago (2001 for me) and never left.

