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

[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.