Just in case

[koganbot]

FYI in case lj shuts down:

my email is edcasual at earthlink dot net

Perhaps we should have a thread on poptimists about contingency plans if lj actually does go down.

For those not following the story, livejournal laid off a whole hunk of its San Francisco staff, 13 of 30 people says one news site, 20 of 28 says another. Its own not-very-informative statement (at least according to this site) goes:

LiveJournal Inc. today announced a restructuring of their US and Russian operations to more effectively manage costs in light of the global economic downturn. LiveJournal Inc.'s headquarters, technical operations (and servers), legal, administration and the customer service teams will remain in the United States. LiveJournal's global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office. The pooling of resources between the US and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal.

As a result of these changes Matthew Berardo, VP and General Manager of LiveJournal Inc., will be leaving the company along with other valued colleagues. Mr Berardo has played the leading role in consolidating product and design effort to enable the business to more effectively streamline costs during his tenure. LiveJournal Inc. will now be led jointly by Stephanie Gravelle, currently LiveJournal Inc.'s director of finance and administration and Sergei Komarov, currently CTO of SUP (the owners of LiveJournal).

I'm curious if anyone knows what LiveJournal's business model was at the start, and what it is now - as in, how they make their money.

Someone spammed a comment thread with good words about this journal sharing site [EDIT: Insane Journal]. But again, can such a site really get a consistent source of income?

By the way, all along I've been downloading most of the journal entries/comment threads where I've made a comment.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Also, if anyone wants to try this non-LJ Book alternative on Poptimists (it's PC only), that'd be awesome. If I can do it from my password I'll try later today and let y'all know.

http://fawx.com/software/ljarchive/

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

i'm on this. hopefully it will work.

[koganbot]

My web browser has been having trouble loading things all day so I haven't reached it yet. What is this site and what does it do?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

you download ljarchive and then run it and have an argument with it for about ten minutes before it consents to download the contents of your journal into an archive; i'm about to find out how well it will do with poptimists. :/

ljbook won't do communities, unfortunately. or well, anything at the minute.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

piss, ljarchive won't do comments with communities, unless i'm just being completely idiotic. this seems completely stupid.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

What's the format like?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

crappy, overall & it opens in your web browser but better than nothing i guess?

it won't do poptimists, argh!

[koganbot]

Wait wait wait. Speak slowly and distinctly.

you download ljarchive and then run it and have an argument with it for about ten minutes before it consents to download the contents of your journal into an archive; i'm about to find out how well it will do with poptimists

So, I download some software onto my computer. Then, using that software, I download my livejournal in its entirety onto my computer, where I can tuck it into some folder or something, and when I want to open it it opens in my web browser (which is Google Chrome). So I can look at it and gaze in wonder about my brilliance. I assume it downloads the comment threads in their entirety as well, so I can gaze in wonder at your brilliance. And does it, like, allow me to search it, add to it, and stuff?

Does it allow me to download someone else's livejournal?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it would do someone else's... I think it wants you to have the password for the journal in question.

And yeah, it seems to have downloaded my comments in their entireity. I'm not sure if it allows searching or editing or anything, I imagine you can delete parts of the archive. It displays it, somewhat frustratingly, an entry at a time and you have to flick through them although there's probably some way around this.

As an emergency tool for a quick complete archive, it works fine.

[koganbot]

OK, it's giving me five choices of what to download depending on my "architecture." Four of them say "Platform independent" and one says "any." Which should I choose? What are they talking about?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I don't think it matters; I went for the one which ended in .exe on the basis it seemed simplest.

[koganbot]

OK, here goes! Or not. (I can't tell if it's downloading, since it sent me to this big ad page.)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I had to click the 'if your download's not working click here' thing but so long as you've said to save the .exe somewhere it should be happening. It took very little time for me but I don't know what your connection's like.

[koganbot]

It just wouldn't download at all, and then finally I clicked the "if your download's not working" button for the fifteenth time and it downloaded in a second.

I actually think the format is better there than what I've got here. Unfortunately it doesn't import icons or YouTube imbeds, but it does import photos.

What do they mean by "sync"?

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

i'm not really sure, honestly; i assume it means you can 're-sync' archives & update them as you go along possibly?

[koganbot]

By "re-sync" do you mean it will import new comments (such as this one) to an entry it's already archived? (It seems to do this automatically, when I leave the archive and return to it. I'll do that right now a an experiment, to see if it catches this comment.)

[koganbot]

Or maybe it's the equivalent of hitting "refresh."

[koganbot]

OK, Google let me into a cached version of their site. This is what it says:

--Download and navigate a synchronized, local archive of your journal.
--Run custom plugins on your journal. ljArchive comes with the following plugins:
--Entry Reader - reads your journal entries aloud using text-to-speech technology.
You may need an update from Microsoft.com to use this plugin.
--Regressive Imagery Analysis - provides a psychological profile of your journal.
--Word Count - provides a list of the words used in your journal, and their frequency.
--Post Frequency - graphs the frequency of your posts over time.
--Comment Count - graphs the number of comments left by users in your journal, and also how many comments you've left them.
--View/export entries and comments using a completely customizable HTML template system. You can customize settings for templates and also build your own templates.
--Search through your journal for keywords, and browse through search results immediately.
--Export your journal into various formats, such as XML, HTML, PDF (in conjucntion with LJBook), and MIDI (yes, MIDI!).

I do not necessarily understand all parts of that.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

You can use it to download any journal you have the password to, including communities you own/moderate. Outbound HTML links remain active, images are cached, and it does text search. (Actually, I keep an LJ archive copy of my journal for the purpose of text searching.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

(Also, I'm pretty sure that to run the LJ Archive software you need to download and install the .NET code architecture - you probably don't have this yet.)

[koganbot]

Thank you. I probably won't need LJ's archive since the faux lj software I just got from skyecaptain's suggested link seems to be working fine.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I've got an archiving program on my Mac, and I think it will let maintainers archive communities too -- I'll look it up and post the link when I get home tonight.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

If anyone needs to be made a poptimists maintainer in order to archive, just ask me (or Kat or Moggy who I assume can pass on the privilege too!)

[koganbot]

Well, as long as someone is archiving poptimists, we're OK. (If lj does go belly-up, would we be able to import old poptimists content elsewhere, say to Freaky Trigger?)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

The software I've got archives both XML and HTML, IIRC, which I think means it can be imported into other sites. (Not sure exactly how, though.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the fauxLJ thing archives to XML and HTML as options (you just Export As... from the menu for anyone here who used it already). Since my Mac won't run the LJArchive app, I'll just settle for the XML text, which is at least readable and searchable. (And eventually re-format-able somewhere else if I really want to.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Archiving program for Mac (also works on Windows and Linux): LJMigrate. Requires use of command-line prompts, but the tutorial available at that link makes it ridiculously easy.

[koganbot]

Oh yes, and I've sanely been ignoring my MySpace for almost a year now, but here it is:

http://www.myspace.com/frankkogan

and here is its blog:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=76037354

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I'm curious if anyone knows what LiveJournal's business model was at the start, and what it is now - as in, how they make their money.

Long story, but Wiki has a good overview of it here. Basically:

However, as LiveJournal became more popular, Fitzpatrick was approached by multiple parties who wished to purchase it. He initially resisted many of these offers, not wanting his pet project (which he has characterized as his "baby") in the hands of those who did not understand the site's core principles — reliance on paid memberships to fund site operations, the absence of advertising, the volunteer support model, and LiveJournal's support of the free software movement.

However, since the sale to Six Apart and then to SUP, LJ has been relying more and more on ads -- see the wank over the addition of "Plus" accounts, the removal of "Basic" accounts, and the inclusion of ads when "Basic" accounts were reinstated. (Can't find the initial Basic-kill announcement post, but here's Brad Fitzpatrick's take on it, and the subsequent announcements are all up on lj_2008.)

I doubt LJ will go down completely -- it's big, it's popular, I'm sure SUP will be happy to keep running it even if US operations go down, and I'm sure someone will want it if SUP decides to give it up -- but it might change. (For the worse. SUP is like the shittiest company in the history of companies -- frankly the best thing that could happen to LJ would be SUP selling it to Google to be eaten by Blogger or something.)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Panic not! boyofbadgers has some lj-scraping software that I'm sure we can apply to the best threads, convert them into xml format and post them up somewhere for posterity. That's what I'm doing with my journal.

[brak55.livejournal.com]

I posted this in another friend's blog, but I think it's appropriate here, too.

I personally think this is a "the sky is falling" knee jerk reaction by the general community.

Yes, LJ may be in trouble financially and laying off, but so are a LOT of other companies. The fact is that LJ is the 76th most visited site in the world, 61st in the United States and 10th most visited in Russia. This is no small potatoes.

Perhaps it just isn't being run well at the moment. I would think it would be prime real estate to be bought out before it is just shut down (and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a Russian company).

[koganbot]

You may be right, but I'm still curious how lj makes its money, since being visited a lot doesn't necessarily mean they've got a viable product (I have a feeling that many online news sources short of the NY Times or Wall Street Journal are going to go belly up in the next few years, not because they're short of site visitors but because they can't get people to click on ads, hence can't sell ads).

Just what is it that livejournal sells.

We should be thinking of alternatives anyway, since various defects in comparison to ilX - especially nested comments and no "updated threads" notification within a community - make lj hard to use for what we're trying to do on poptimists. (Of course, going back to ilX is an option, but that site has just become so big and full of bores that it's become unwieldy.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

ADS. IT SELLS ADS. READ MY EFFING COMMENT THAT I POSTED NEARLY TWO HOURS AGO.

Actually, it sells a combination of ads to advertisers and services to users (paid accounts, additional userpics, etc.) but SUP (the Russian company which owns the US-based LiveJournal, Inc.) has spent the past year alienating vast swaths of the userbase -- so I would guess that services aren't selling quite as well as they used to, and I would also guess that is related to this round of layoffs. (Which would really suck, because it would mean that the LiveJournal, Inc. staff is essentially taking the fall for SUP's shite business practices).

I think a typical message board might be best for what you want out of poptimists; the problem there is that some people (i.e., me) might get lazy about checking that on top of all the other sites they check throughout the day.

[koganbot]

Er, yes, I read your post and wasn't speaking that clearly here; what I meant was how do they get the revenue out of ads that the other Internet sites (except the real high-volume sites such as Google) have trouble getting, given that so few website visitors click on ads. (I think an answer might be that they don't get many people clicking on ads at all, but given that they have to pay nothing for content, only for upkeep, the small number of clickers has been enough to lj going. But I'm just speculating.)

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I think the free content helps, as does the additional income from user services -- which is probably pretty significant, given that LJ was able to run on that alone for so long.

Also, do you think they get paid per click? I assume they sell ads at set rates based on page views, the same way print publications (and Gawker Media, yeah?) do.

[koganbot]

No idea if it's per click or per view, but either way the advertisers aren't going to shell out if they don't think they're getting the clicks.

[brak55.livejournal.com]

There are many ad programs where a user does not have to click for the site to gain income. I work through one program on my site/blog that pays per thousand impressions and then additional if clicked. With about 10 to 11,000 impressions a month, I'm not making great money but it beats writing for free.

[koganbot]

The thing is, a lot of poptimists fled devoted less time to their previous message board, going to poptimists as an alternative. I wonder if there's a way to combine the best of livejournal and the best of a message board (people having their own journals but the communities given more and better message-board capabilities).

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

You mean ILX? That's because ILX is crap. I mean a proper message board that doesn't look like a lo-fi forum archive.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

God I sound bitchy today. The ILX design (or lack thereof) really bothers me, though.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

what even the optional stylesheet that i made for it?

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Is yours blueski? That and the Kenan stylesheet are the best, but neither fixes what I find most maddening about ILX: the way discussions are just barfed onto the page as big, unwieldy lists of responses, with no nesting, no threading, no links back to the posts being referenced, etc.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

oh i got used to that long ago to the extent that when i came to LJ i hated the way it lays out threads (and i still kinda do!)

[koganbot]

Me too: the ilX way made for a fuller discussion, though that may have worked because of the people involved, in that one usually didn't want to ignore the sub conversations, and there was something to be said for being forced to take in some of the discussions one did want to ignore.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

It might have made the conversation better for those already involved in it, but I think it made it more difficult to enter. Back in the day I tried to answer Dave when he asked why more random Googlers didn't join Rolling Teenpop; I argued that the style of discussion made it somewhat uninviting, but I think I've changed my mind, because now I agree with something Dave said:

(2) My limited experience with MySpacers and googlers is that a lot of them have a passion and perspective that other people on the thread -- precisely because they're so darn clever -- don't have. Like, I've gotten schooled numerous times by Aly and AJ fans who basically think I'm a paranoid jerk (and, funny thing, they're RIGHT!). So I'd like to see, f'rinstance, some of them post more than once in my comments, and in a post that isn't from 2005, so that I can respond to them and we can have a conversation. This could happen in small doses on, say, a comment thread, though the likelihood of it happening on Rolling Teenpop is slim because RT is so hard to parse even when you know what the heck it is. That's really just a format thing, though.

[koganbot]

ilX had pretty much the best music discussion I'd ever seen, give or take a few great moments in the fanzines. But it was very text oriented (though I'm sure some ilX aficionados could link you to some classic photoshop threads).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

one of the reasons I found ILX so easy to keep up with was because it didn't look like the internet and you could get away with it at work.

[koganbot]

The 'Net equivalent of a plain brown wrapper.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Also, I agree with braak55's comment -- there are a lot of users and a lot of content here, and odds are somebody would want to buy that.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

haha we could ask for our own private sub-board on ilx!!