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.

Re:Sell it!!

[SpooForBrains]

What blog menace? Seriously, if you don't want to see any blogs, then don't. There's an entire internet out there. Or do you just like having something to complain about?

i really don't think it'll matter

[wintermute1000]

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!"

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 /. nerds wants to be associated with online diaries. Eeeeew.

LiveJournal doesn't profit through advertising...

[vorpal22]

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.

While I also love /., I find many of the advertisements obnoxiously tacky and intrusive, and I have no desire to pay for the service, unfortunately.

One of the most popular Open Source projects?

[cuban321]

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.

No. It wasn't sarcasm.

[glrotate]

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.

The hatred for random blogs

[dema]

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?

Re:Sell it!!

[Vellmont]

isn't Slashdot kindof a blog? Maybe?


No. A blog is where one person makes journal entries, and other people read it. Slashdot is a news discussion site. That's a lot different in content and format than a blog. Blogs are all about one person, Slashdot is about a the geek world around us.

Re:While on the topic of Livejournal

[beckerbuns]

I have only been on LJ for a few months but I've found it to be a warm and welcoming community. I have found groups of people with similar concerns and interests as mine and have been able to get support, advice, and commiseration (and joking around of course) there.

The blog haters can just stay away, I guess. I find LJ to be a valuable resource.

Not bloody likely (I hope)

[Audigy]

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 [livejournal.com] main page.

LJ seems to be what most think about blogs

[ShatteredDream]

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.

Re:And ...?

[fe_plus]

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.

Re:LJ. bleah

[dema]

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.

How exactly is that any different from the internet itself? I could just as easily register a domain, put up a page full of gossip, generate hits from people likely to agree, slander without names, etc etc. If the problem with blogs is the ability to "say anything," isn't the internet just as flawed?

Re:While on the topic of Livejournal

[fe_plus]

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.

Re:sniff it

[I confirm I'm not a]

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.

OK, I'll hold my hands up and admit that maybe, just maybe, I'm sarcasm-impaired. Maybe.

...but, and it's a big but, there's a strong elitist grouping on Slashdot who argue that blogs are the devil, and I read the OP in that light. The subsequent replies seem to bear out that train of thought...

I'm also not sure if Corporate Media [TM] (you forgot to trademark that phrase, hah, beat you!) want to buy out and squash blogs - another possibility is that Corporate Media is just waking up to the money-making potential, and will milk blogs rather than squash them.

Anyhoo, back to my parents' basement... ;)

Disclaimer: I do not now, nor have I ever, maintained my own blog. I do, however, post on Slashdot and similar forums (fora?) and I find many blogs incredibly useful. Obviously I ignore the "I h8 my parents they are teh su><ors!"-type blogs...

Re:Hopefully not

[Anonymous Coward]

It's well designed if you're a CS major.

From the end user standpoint it's a pain in the ass.

Re:Good Riddance

[TheAwfulTruth]

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.

Re:LJ seems to be what most think about blogs

[geoff43230]

One of the reasons that some blogs which ultilize the WordPress and / or MovableType format in style is that these services, generally speaking, cost something (even if a small amount), not only in money but in (marginal but present) communication with server B.

About 97% of LJ's users (it changes but generally remains in this number : here [livejournal.com] is their stats page) are free. A few reasonably intelligent luminaries, including for example horror author Poppy Z. Brite, have blogs at the site so of course free or 'common' shouldn't necessarily equal 'demise' or 'not worthy'. Many people use electricity and that won't be going away anytime soon (although hopefully it will change to more environmentally-friendly methods such as wind and water power, however I digress). Just my 2 cents.

No easy way? What sort of geek are you?

[Tink2000]

Here is the FAQ [livejournal.com] 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.