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Discussion Forums » General Discussion
Page:  1 
Is LiveJournal on its last leg?
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8 Apr 2011, 23:35
chiaromezzo
Post Count: 19
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2063952,00.html

I know, I know. I use LiveJournal on a semi-regular basis. I'm a Meme whore, plus I know a lot of other friends from college who still use the site. It looks like it was coded by a seventh grader but I've used it since I was a wee one, so I still write there out of habit.

Who among you still uses it? Have you noticed the crashing and overall site difficulties? Will the Russians totally destroy LiveJournal? It certainly seems that way. Oh, nostalgia.
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14 Apr 2011, 21:07
Bellatrix Lestrange
Post Count: 234
Ya lyublyu LJ!
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9 Apr 2011, 00:21
Jessica [Private]
Post Count: 1751
I didn't know Russians were all over livejournal! ;D I thought they all stuck to Vkontakte!

Personally, I've never been much of a fan of LJ. I've tried using it on a few occasions, but it never really struck my fancy.

Maybe they're redoing the servers or something, and thats why it's being a pain? Hopefully they get it fixed up for you guys! :)
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9 Apr 2011, 00:24
chiaromezzo
Post Count: 19
Oh no, check the link. It's a Russian political carpetbombing of Russians who are speaking out against the government. They're trying to squelch free speech, but it's seriously disrupting LJ. It's a popular site for Russian LJ users. Kind of crazy! They seem to have a fantastic handle on it even though the attacks themselves are immense in the damage they're doing.
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9 Apr 2011, 08:46
& skull.
Post Count: 1701
i get random russian bots adding me all the time. pain in the ass.
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9 Apr 2011, 00:26
Aubrey;
Post Count: 377
I use Livejournal... I was very upset about the crashing, but I heard it was definitely political, and we can't blame the LJ people for the problems, really.
I hope that they can solve the issues, but I don't understand the entire thing, really.
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9 Apr 2011, 00:29
chiaromezzo
Post Count: 19
I'm not blaming them at all, I think they've done an amazing job at containing the problem. They mapped ALL of the IP addresses that were registered as having contributed to the mass hacking (for lack of a better term) and seem to have a handle on the situation.
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9 Apr 2011, 00:47
Aubrey;
Post Count: 377
Oh yeah, no I didn't say that you were blaming them. I was mostly saying it for myself. After the first time I was annoyed, but yeah.
I'm glad to hear that they've got a handle on it. It seems strange that the Russian politics is affecting the website.
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9 Apr 2011, 00:54
chiaromezzo
Post Count: 19
It's okay, I knew you weren't, I just wanted to say off the bat that I wasn't being unreasonable about the situation. I guess LiveJournal is really popular among Russians for some reason. It's weird!
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9 Apr 2011, 02:40
Greta Garbage
Bloop Community Organizer
Post Count: 309
i gave away my LiveJournal account. I didn't like the layout of it.
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9 Apr 2011, 07:59
ღPhoenix
Post Count: 126
I've been a member of LJ since back in the day when the only way to get one was to be invited by someone! It was my refuge when i felt not welcomed here anymore and i wrote only there for about 2-3 years before giving up on it and finally returning here. I've noticed that a lot of the people i was friends with that "update their LJ every single day" havent updated in months. I like Bloop/Blogger a lot more than LJ and i havent been there in years but it really sucks that its going down the tubes it was so good back in the day.
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9 Apr 2011, 08:08
chiaromezzo
Post Count: 19
Wow! Yeah, I started writing there when it had already been around for over a decade, but I loved it. I'll still update, and I actually like writing there, but it's struggling and that's a bummer. It still doesn't crash as much as OD, but I'm not crazy about Blogger. I think I'm more of a Bloop/Wordpress kind of guy anymore. Sometimes OD. Mostly not.
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9 Apr 2011, 13:23
Estella
Post Count: 1779
There was huge uproar quite a while ago when LJ was sold to Russian owners, and some of the policies changed. Quite a few people left and joined other similar sites, like Dreamwidth or Insane Journal. I've used LJ for years - longer than I've used Bloop. I don't use it very frequently though, so I wasn't aware of the recent crash until after it happened. To be honest, I think LJ is probably on its last legs, not because of the Russians, but because people have moved on from there to FB and Twitter if they prefer quicker updates, or WP or Blogger if they are serious about blogging. So it's a lot less popular than it used to be.
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9 Apr 2011, 21:20
Mojo Jojo
Post Count: 278
I love LJ. I use it way more than bloop, but you do have to cultivate a friends list - you can't rely on randoms coming to read.
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9 Apr 2011, 21:35
chiaromezzo
Post Count: 19
That's one of the reasons I love LJ. You can be choosy about who you read and who reads you. No one can just pop in and comment, and I think that's a nice feature to keep out the crazies.
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9 Apr 2011, 21:56
Estella
Post Count: 1779
Yes, exactly - it's not like Bloop, where people just randomly read you. You have to actively find friends, or join with a bunch of friends. So you have a community that you've chosen rather than a ready-made community.
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10 Apr 2011, 18:54
Chris
Post Count: 1938
Is LJ not one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) blogging sites on the Internet? How is it Sven coming close to being on its "last leg"?
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10 Apr 2011, 20:30
- misseriin*
Post Count: 64
I still have my LJ from highschool but it was all put on private. I use it for surveys since no one uses it anymore.
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11 Apr 2011, 16:48
Sypha Belnades
Post Count: 64
There are roughly 150,000 - 200,000 active accounts left on LJ. A huge drop from the peak of 8 million.

LJ is still hugely popular...in Russia. Pretty much everyone I know has abandoned LJ years ago. I don't go there for anything other than ONTD anymore.

So yeah, I think it's just a matter of time before the English service gets the plug pulled.
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11 Apr 2011, 20:23
Estella
Post Count: 1779
Yes, and a lot of those accounts are hardly used. I know so many people on LJ who used to update all the time and now only update once every few months.

And definitely a lot of Russian users nowadays. Clicking on the answers to the 'writers block' exercise always leads to lots of entries in Russian. This was not the case a few years ago.
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12 Apr 2011, 20:32
Chris
Post Count: 1938
Sypha: Holy shit, really? Where did you find that number? That's a HUGE decrease, and if those numbers are correct, then I sincerely take back my previous post.
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13 Apr 2011, 01:50
Estella
Post Count: 1779
The numbers are not accurate, although numbers have decreased. Current statistics are here: http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml Approx 2 million active accounts. So, like, bigger than Bloop! ;D There are also a lot of 31-year-olds, for some reason. I wonder if there used to be a default birth date of 1st Jan 1980. Or if that's just a popular fake birth date.
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13 Apr 2011, 17:43
Sypha Belnades
Post Count: 64
Forgot where I got that number from, but that chick above me also posted the stat page for LJ.

It's hard to get hard numbers -- the raw data says a bunch of people updated in the past 30 days, but most of those are either 1. Russian, 2. people updating to say "I've moved, go here for my stuff", 3. twitter/rss feeds automatically updating. And I can't remember if that distinguishes individual journals from communities (which would make a difference).

Back around 2003 or so, those stats used to be on the front page, and they were MUCH higher.
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13 Apr 2011, 14:25
Aubrey;
Post Count: 377
I'm a member of communities on LJ and those can be VERY active - several posts a day with a lot of comments. I think those are more active than perhaps a lot of journals are... Like, some people have a journal, but they use it to post comments on communities instead of their own journals.
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15 Apr 2011, 16:15
Estella
Post Count: 1779
Incidentally, quite a few people are moving from LJ to Dreamwidth - or at least making back-up journals there in case LJ totally goes tits up! Dreamwidth has no ads, and has some features in the free version that are paid features on LJ, so quite a few people prefer it. At the moment it's a lot smaller than LJ, but who knows.

For people curious about the Russian political element and why so many Russians use LJ, a Dreamwidth user who used to work for LJ wrote an entry about it here: http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/459929.html
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