

LiveJournal: Russia's Unlikely Internet Giant - J3L2404
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17177053?

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AndrewDucker
I still use Livejournal. I've sadly not managed to find a better blogging site
that has decent security options on it.

The threaded comments are better than almost any other discussion forum, and
the level of control you have over comments and visibility are very high.

It's just a shame that the owners couldn't make money that way, and seem to be
focussed on an entirely different demographic.

I'm "AndrewDucker" over there, by the way. Feel free to add, if you like lots
of links to things.

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smsm42
Using LiveJournal too, since 2001. I think LJ technological base is great -
for discussing random stuff, it's one of the best platforms I've used. Much
better than the most other blog hosting engines. The russian-language
community there is remarkable, both by the size and the quality - many
prominent writers, political and public figures, journalists, scientists,
celebrities are actively engaging in the community - it is a very interesting
place, and much more fit for maintaining an engaged community than, say,
Facebook.

However, since SUP bought the platform, the management was nothing short of
disaster. The great success in community building in Livejournal is evenly
matched by the failure of current administration in the technical site
building. Technically, it is plagued with DOSes, screwups, breakdowns,
security breaches and UI changes that nobody asked for and that make it
annoying to use. Moderation is chaotic and voluntaristic, and prone to abuse
by interested parties. They do not seem to have any plan of how to develop the
site and so far almost all the improvements they made seem to make the
platform worse, not better. The people in the management also have very openly
disdainful attitude towards the users, publicly calling users complaining
about their policies idiots, freaks, assholes, etc. Of course sharing any
plans about site development with the community or, God forbid, let the
community have a voice in it - are out of the question completely.

Their monetization efforts also seem to lack any coherent direction. They have
paid accounts, and I have been paid user for many years. However, now I am
considering switching back to the free option, since the feeling that I'm
getting something for my money - better service, better options, etc. - is
disappearing fast. Many paid options are useless for me - such as ability of
having 200 userpics or 500 links in my homepage - but the main factor is that
I don't feel the management of the site knows what they are doing. They bought
a great platform and a great community, but my feeling is they are squandering
it away.

~~~
Auguste
Just curious, what do you think is the best alternative to LiveJournal for
blogging? Do you see yourself moving to that alternative any time soon?

~~~
smsm42
I'd probably go with heavily customized standalone wordpress setup. But that
requires time to set up and tune and tweak, which I do not have... So for now
I'm waiting till inapt LJ management pisses me off enough that I finally make
time for it and move. Or that somebody develops a good blogging platform with
same strengths in community building as LJ, but for the last 10 years it
didn't happen, so I'm not very optimistic.

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yuxt
nothing is mentioned in the article that LJ was sold to Russian Media company
"SUP" few years ago by Six Apart

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bodyfour
Huh? It's right there. Quote:

    
    
      The Russian-language pages were licensed to the Russian company SUP media, founded
      by US entrepreneur Andrew Paulson and a Russian banker thought to be close to the
      Kremlin, Alexander Mamut. Just over a year later, SUP bought LiveJournal.

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CoffeeAndCoffee
I think Tumblr could pickup where LiveJournal left off if comments were
enabled.

~~~
britta
Tumblr already has a lot of the userbase that LiveJournal used to have, even
without comments, but it lacks LiveJournal's useful privacy controls.

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isalmon
The article is very outdated (02/29/12)

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zem
a three-month old article on a 10+ year old site is hardly outdated.

