I don't want to start a panic but...

[gnimaerd]

LiveJournal as a whole might be in trouble.

(Yeah, I'm REALLY glad I didn't buy a permenant account now).

Firstly, I would advise people not to start running around like headless chickens. There are very few actual named sources behind this article. The author is largely making statements based on theories, not facts. All we know for sure is that Sup recently axed a bunch of workers at LJ HQ - which given the current financial climate is not surprising.

But given how much Sup, and Six Apart before it, have been utterly failing to take LJs current users' wants and needs into account, I don't think we can afford to be complacent. These companies have time and again proved that they want LiveJournal to be something it isn't, and in trying to turn it into something they THINK will be profitable they have been losing revenue because the existing LJ-users have felt alienated and either stopped paying for accounts or taken their business elsewhere entirely. These people don't know how to run LiveJournal. They've been trying to run it so it turns them a massive profit, when frankly this just isn't the kind of place that ever will, and all they've got from it is grief from the users. We are not a social networking site - we are a communal blogging service and fandom resource. There's a HUGE difference between us and somewhere like Facebook, and Sup clearly made a mistake in thinking that it could make money out of LJ in the same way when it simply can't.

LiveJournal has never been about big business. This is not the sort of site you can really make a profit from and these businesses seem to have been operating under the dellusion that SOMEHOW they can squeeze a lot more cash out of it. Now the truth of the situation - that some things on the internet just don't adhere to capatilist market structure - has dawned and... well, I have no idea what they might do about that.

I doubt LJ will actually be shut down in the near future - we're not a HUGE profit maker but we are still popular and we still must be making SOME profit given how many users are still here and how much advertising gets done here, chances are we just aren't making as much profit as Sup would have liked. If it IS shut down, I doubt that it will be done without fair warning, and I would suspect that there will be a very large effort to save it on the part of the users. (There was talk, back in the aftermath of the 2007 strikethrough, of a large group banding together and attempting to buy LJ on behalf of the users and running it on a not-for-profit basis, which I think is actually quite feasable).

But like I said, given Sup's history, we can't afford to be complacent. This is a very useful tool for archiving your LJ-posts if you are worried. Given as how nearly three years of my life is recordered here, I'll certainly be backing mine up just in case Sup pulls the plug without any warning.

But like I said, f-listies - don't panic. The sky is vibrating uneasily, but it isn't falling quite yet and it may never come down.

Comments

[a-stone-angel.livejournal.com]

I heard rumblings about this a day or so ago - at that time they were saying more employees had been axed than that. I guess there'll be some sort of LJ statement about it, with the official facts. Really, all they need to do is scale back their ambitions a bit; silly, profit-driven people. I remember around the time they took over there was a campaign to get over-18s to register as such, as the management was working on the premise that the majority of LJers were teenagers using it in a facebooky way...they misjudged what LJ was all about, I think.
Anyway, thanks for the archive link - I'm not panicking in any way just yet, but I'll certainly be doing a backup, when the servers are less busy.

[multred-a.livejournal.com]

I read about this last night and copied my fic community to insane journal just in case. I also set up a site at blogger. I think I archived my journal...not sure. I was tired.

[gnimaerd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the fact that we haven't heard anything official from LJ yet is reassuring. I suspect that if things were actually on the verge of closing down completely, they would have told us by now, since those with paid accounts and permenant accounts would probably be looking for some kind of compensation and that will take a LONG time to sort out.

And yeah, they completely misjudged what LJ was. That's why I like the idea of the place being owned and run by people who use the site themselves - at least that way we can be sure that people understand the nature of LiveJournal, and don't think that it's just a slightly more literate version of Facebook.

[precious-rosie.livejournal.com]

I refuse to get sucked into the panic and paranoia. Very often things like this get blown out of proportion and in the end everyone is wondering what the fuss was about. However, I'll back up my journal as a precaution and take it from there, if anything happens. I'm not looking around for an alternative site to blog at yet either. Life's too short.

[gnimaerd.livejournal.com]

Thats basically my attitude too. There's no point panicing, but it's probably a good idea to stay aware of the situation and take precautions in the unlikely event that the absolute worst occurs.

[vermontypython.livejournal.com]

I don't think they'd ax LJ. If they realized how many people would be worse off- I mean, I'm only sane right now because of it, and I'm sure quite a few people feel the same. LJ kind of...is my social life at the moment.

0_o

[spectralis.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the back-up software -- like everyone else, I'm not panicking yet but it would be prudent to back things up *anyway* I think. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

It does annoy me when companies buy up things like LJ and then try to change them -- Flickr certainly didn't improve when Yahoo took it over. If I want to use a Facebook-style site then I'll use Facebook! Surely one of the main attractions of LJ is that it's a different animal and NOT Facebook. Just... leave it alone!