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

[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.