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.'"

Im wondering...

Will that mean LiveJournal will write us from now on?

Pure Coincidence or Kremlin Shenanigan?

The Russian election for the Duma concluded on December 2. During this process, Golos [guardian.co.uk] was instrumental in identifying voting irregularities that skewed the vote in favor of United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party. Golos is an independent organization that monitors elections and receives funding from the United States and the European Union.

Golos and its supporters have been maintaining a blog page at LiveJournal [guardian.co.uk]. You can read either the actual blog page in Russian [livejournal.com] or the English translation of the blog page [google.com]. 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?

Putinist Russia

Does this mean that any anti-Putin blogging will be noted and passed on to the "proper" authorities?

Re:Putinist Russia

You may be joking, but there appears to have been a considerable amount of concern [iht.com] about this when SUP first got involved with LJ -- Alexander Mamut, one of SUP's main investors (or possibly its owner -- I've seen both descriptions in articles), apparently has some ties to Putin. Brad had tried to assuage fears about it [livejournal.com] at the time, but I unfortunately don't really know how the situation stands on the Russian side after those initial reactions.

As a longtime LJ user, I'm encouraged that Brad's still optimistic about SUP today, and I don't think Six Apart ever really knew exactly what to make of LJ, but I'm still having a hard time getting over a vaguely uneasy feeling about the whole thing.

Re:Putinist Russia

It'll still be more free than it would be here.

Not at all. Not by a long shot.

The US may have sunk into becoming a harsh Big-Brother nation that is effectively ruled by two wings of a single party, but Russia is run by their local mafia.

In the US you still have lots of TV channels and papers and forums loudly critical of the reigning system, in Russia such voices are systematically silenced. In the US your government may be shamelessly lying to you about important matters like reasons for war and reasons for what they call anti-terror measures, but dissenting voices do get heard, even if they drown in the general noise. In Russia dissent is silenced for real.

In Russia it is too late. In the US it is not too late. Not yet. There's still time for you people to do something, should you wish to do something about it.

Re:Putinist Russia

I can tell you've never been to Russia.

I live there. It's cold.

Yes, there are problems with the limited Russian media. However, your definition of Russia as a harsh Big-brother nation run by the local mafia is overly simple and in most cases just flat out wrong.

The mafia don't run Russia any more. Russia is controlled and run by a few very rich corporations and individuals. The number of very rich corporations and individuals is growing on a daily basis.

Dissenting voices do get heard. The problem is that most Russians don't care to listen. Most Russians don't give a shit about politics.

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.

In another 4-8 years, Putin's power in the Russian government will have declined, and Russia will start to move towards a true, multi-party system as all those wealthy companies and individuals step in to fill the ex-Putin void. However, in the mean time there's no reason for Russia to change, and the vast majority of Russians will be much better off if the status quo is maintained for a couple years longer.

P.S. In Russia, Gary Kasparov is a joke. And 95% of what the New York Times writes about Russia is pure tripe.

Re:Putinist Russia

It'll still be more free than it would be here.

As a linguist studying minority languages of Russia, I do field work in places where the Putin-aligned local government has had no qualms sending goons to beat women and the elderly with pipes just for speaking or singing songs in the local indigenous language, and opposition figures still get sent to psychiatric hospitals whenever they dare to challenge the ruling party. When has that last happened in the US? Certainly there are some worrying developments in civil liberties, but people can breathe a lot more freely there than in Russia, which is truly one of the scariest places I've visited.

Re:Putinist Russia

It'll still be more free than it would be here.

In the US, if you loudly criticize the government you won't be heard because a finely-tuned media machine will just shout louder. In Russia, if you loudly criticize the government you won't be heard because you'll disappear.

In the US, the president belongs to an "old boys network" of guys who were in the same secret fraternity in their college days. In Russia, the president belongs to an "old boys network" of guys who were in the same secret police agency in the Soviet days.

In the US, journalists who uncover serious government misconduct get yelled at by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. In Russia, journalists who uncover serious government misconduct get injected with lethal doses of radioactive material.

Now. You were saying?

Hmmm

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...

Re:Hmmm

I predict that 50% of the comments here will be thinly-veiled racial attacks on Russia.

Criticizing Russia's government and corruption isn't a racial attack, unless you're criticizing the fact that they're White.

Editorial Controls?

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.

Re:Editorial Controls?

In 3 months, I predict that each livejournal member's cat will be pro-Putin.

Paid Accounts

So paid account users are sending their money to... Russia?

Its all Russian anyways

It seems like +85% of LJ pages are Russian anyways, so this makes sense.

First it was China...

...now, it's Russia. Guys, the Russians are coming! These two countries are gobbling up our [American] companies fast!

Re:First it was China...

First it was China...now, it's Russia. Guys, the Russians are coming! These two countries are gobbling up our [American] companies fast!

Welcome to the weak dollar. Newly rich former adversaries are buying into our economy, both Germany and Japan did the same thing in the 80's. Might be a good thing for our (American) economy, might be (another) problem, however fresh capital is rarely a bad thing.

Filtering and Censorship

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.

Prediction: no more censorship

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.

Watch Out!

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?

Forcibly Expanding International Interaction. Yay?

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...

Long time...

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.

credit details

....expect odd charges apearing in 3,2,1...

Big News! The Rest Of the World Has Money Now

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 [econstats.com]
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.

Death of an open source project

Here's some of the dirt on SUP:

http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/tag/sup [livejournal.com]

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.

So...

JWZ will have to write blog in Russian now?

http://jwz.livejournal.com/ [livejournal.com]

Improved Customer Relations

(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, very nice.
How much ?

Honk! Honk!

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.

Malware, RBN, and you

Just remember, there's been a lot of malware coming out of Russia lately, particularly from the Russian Business Network [wikipedia.org]. 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.

ZheZhe, Russian media rules

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/ [theotherrussia.org]

Re:ZheZhe, Russian media rules

If (when?) SUP starts actively censoring livejournal (thus far, its moves have been restricted to wordfiltering dpni), all the interesting people will simply migrate to any one of dozens of lj clones, and the less-interesting people will gradually follow. The internet interprets censorship as damage etc. It's not like television, where the opposition eventually ran out of channels. The only real way for Putin to restrict the freedom of blogging is with a China-style filtering setup - and AFAIK, no Russian official has mentioned any plans to do anything of the sort. So far.

And we can already see the reaction

Prominent Russian bloggers are already leaving LJ - or at least opening their blogs elsewhere (greatestjournal, blogspot etc.)

New slogan?

All your content are belong to us?

Russian Media Company

Did anyone else misread this as Russian Mafia Company?

Re:In other words...

Comparing LJ to Myspace or Facebook is like comparing Wordpress to MS Outlook.

Re:doesn't SUP = KGB?

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.

Re:lawlz

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 :)