LJ

[low_delta]

Live Journal is apparently going to be making a change to your friends page. You will no longer be able to view it in your own style. Seriously. It will not be utilizing a series of linked webpages, it will be infinite-scroll, like Tumblr or Facebook. There is no sign that you will be able to opt out. There are screenshots of this, but I can't really tell what it will really be like. This has gone to beta testing, so you can switch if you want (and switch back, until it goes live). There's a link in the navbar, at the top of your journal (for anyone who has it showing).

I had guessed that this was only for free users, but it turns out they will be eliminating paid accounts sometime next spring (remember that permanent accounts are a subset of paid accounts).

Also, the US staff of is down to five, from ten, earlier this year. SUP has no plans to replace them.

http://news.livejournal.com/144003.html

http://ruljautonews.livejournal.com/27964.html
http://twissie.livejournal.com/595181.html
http://www.dailydot.com/news/livejournal-shut-down-us-office/

Comments

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

I am glad to have met some wonderful people on LJ. I am glad that most of those people are now on my Facebook. I count you and Cyn as actual friends, even though we have never met. I hope to maintain contact with you both for the duration, regardless of LJ's inevitable demise.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Delana. You too. I keep wanting to host my own blog, and try to aggregate everyone in feeds, like Les has mentioned, but who know if or when that will happen, and how well it will work. And connectivity is always a hassle. I can't exactly comment as myself.

Dreamwidth seems reasonably solid at the moment, but I worry that a huge influx of users will swamp it, and that they'll start to draw a lot of DDOS attacks. They seem like a family operation.

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

The thing that gives me hope for DW is that so many people have abandoned this type of blogging already, in favor of Facebook. Also, I wonder whether LJ's DDoS attacks haven't been Russian-on-Russian in nature, and so may not affect DW that much. I'm still gonna give it a try, when the time comes. I have imported shrijani's entries over there periodically, and I will keep doing so. I miss the old days here. I remember this place really starting to slide back in '07. Boo. :(

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Seems like they always used to get the DDOS when they did something unpopular. Maybe DW won't have trouble with that.

[ravengirl.livejournal.com]

Fuck-all.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Now what was that trouble you were having with photos? :-(

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

Kevin, I've perused all your links here (most of which I'd already seen) but maybe I read too quickly. Where is the news about phasing out paid accounts?. Why would they give up revenue?

LJ won't die totally, I don't think, but all of my LJ is already backed up at DW and I would continue there as always. The one thing I would miss would be a lot of the people here who wouldn't migrate for whatever reason.

It all just makes me sad, you know?

ETA: never mind, I found the info. But it just says "some time in the future" so who knows?

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Why would they give up revenue?

They have new revenue models. Think about facebook. They're completely free to the user, and you see no ads, yet they're a billion dollar company. So LJ is starting a thing where you can pay to promote your posts. How can LJ promote your posts unless they control the friends page?

[vocalista001.livejournal.com]

I've got several LJ friends who switched over to DW and are cross-posting to LJ. While I'm very glad to be able to continue to read, in order to comment I have to go over to DW and log in. That extra step makes me not follow through, so I don't comment.

I am sad about the changes to LJ, especially knowing I don't have more time to arrange a new journal.

I use my own LJ as a searchable diary of sorts. I'd hate to lose that feature. Can I transfer all of my LJ to DW? how about picture posts I've made....do the galleries transfer?

Gah. I don't know if I even want to try to spend the time trying to figure out yet another system (DW).

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I comment at DW, but I'm not as likely to do so.

especially knowing I don't have more time to arrange a new journal.
What do you mean? Just not having the time to properly customize it? Don't worry about that, just go, if you want. Yes, you can take your whole journal over there, though with this news, there might be a queue. I don't think you can take your photos with you, but I don't know that for sure.

You can set up a DW account and stay logged in, so whenver you go over there, you can just comment. Or if you don't want to do that, you can log in through OpenID.

And if you don't transfer it, it will still be here for a while. I don't think LJ is going anywhere any time soon.

DW is not tough to figure out. It's exactly like LJ, only without all the recent changes.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

:( I don't want LJ to die.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it will still be here, and all the excitement is overblown right now, but every time they do something like this, the place diminishes a bit.