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livejournal
The Deathly Hallows of Online Community
LiveJournal's users are revolting! And not just because of their weird obsession with writing dirty stories about Harry Potter. It's a cautionary tale for anyone hoping to profit from online community. More » -
livejournal
The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network
The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told. -
caption contest
The face of a $747 strike price
This summer, LiveJournal founder turned Google engineer Brad Fitzpatrick briefly sported a fu manchu, a facial-hair styling usually seen in old movies, gay porn, and old gay porn movies. His wistful expression seemed to capture today's end-of-an-era weltanschauung. Will his new pals at Google get trimmed away like his 'stache? Suggest a better caption in the comments, and the best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: "Tesla's alternative energy: the tow truck," by Scalawag. (Photo by Brad Fitzpatrick) -
brad fitzpatrick
Six Apart exec on LiveJournal founder: "Waaaaay down the path to madness"
Brad Fitzpatrick has a Googlephone, and you don't. And what's he doing with his amazing Android-powered toy? Using Google's mobile operating system, Fitzpatrick is coding an automatic garage-door opener, which senses the presence of his phone using Wi-Fi. He can do this because he's already hooked his garage door up to a Web server. Writes Six Apart executive Michael Sippey on this momentous occasion: More » -
livejournal
Just ignore us
Everyone tells you to listen to your customers. In the case of Brad Fitzpatrick's LiveJournal, an online-diary site latched onto by pervy teens and other oddballs, that may have been exactly the wrong advice, says one LiveJournal user. [Randomwalker's Journal] -
blogging for dollars
PopSugar publisher's Tumblr clone
Sugar, the blog network which runs celebrity site PopSugar and fashion site FabSugar, among others, just launched a new blogging tool called OnSugar. Sugar says OnSugar is "sweet and simple publishing." A bit too simple, it turns out. OnSugar looks like a blatant ripoff of Tumblr, the kindergarten-simple blog site popular with Brooklyn and San Francisco's most self-involved Internet users. OnSugar seems to have copied Tumblr's look, feel and features, adding some girly pink. But Sugar's copying was more than just superficial. More » -
drama
Commenters Take Over Internet, Run Bloggers Out on Rails
Internet person Rex Sorgatz put the pieces together—the New York story on the mean Brownstoner commenter, the Times story on commenters running the asylums, and finally last week's Time piece that was kinda-sorta in defense of anonymous nastiness. Commenters are a trend! Everyone is basically terrified of them! And this weekend, former blog entrepreneur Jason Calacanis up and quit the internet. Or, at least, he quit blogging. And started a private email list! Which is basically the definitive proof that the War is Over and the Commenters Won. More » -
livejournal
LiveJournal now even more Russian
Russian publisher Kommersant acquired half of LiveJournal parent company Sup, giving the blog operator control over its news site Gazeta.ru in exchange. Gazeta.ru editor Mikhail Mikhailin said the goal is to create “our own blogosphere." Anybody else worried what the hot air will do to the permafrost in Siberia? [paidContent] -
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livejournal
Social network's advisory-board election sparks talk of death threats
An election to put a LiveJournal user on the company's advisory board ends today at 9 p.m. Pacific, and it looks like a user who goes by the handle legomymalfoy will walk away with the win. But in just a week since polls opened, the election has been mired by accusations of ballot stuffing, conflicts of interest, and multiple death threats. More » -
once you're lucky, twice you're good
F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"
LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick is a prankster, as evidenced by his Halloween costume last year, when the new Googler dressed up as Facebook to mock his coworkers' fears of the social network. I'm told that in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, there's an anecdote about Fitzpatrick submitting an expense report — successfully! — for "hookers and blow" when he worked at blog software startup Six Apart. That was likely a reference to the early days of LiveJournal, when users made ridiculous accusations that Fitzpatrick was spending money meant for servers and bandwidth on "hookers and blow." We'd love to hear more, but alas, Fitzpatrick only got 8 out of 294 pages, according to the book's index. Here's the page for "D" through "F": More » -
exits
Google, Blogger veteran Jason Shellen quits LiveJournal after three months
LiveJournal, only months after Six Apart sold the blogging site to Russian Web firm Sup, has resumed its tradition of corporate drama. Jason Shellen, the company's VP of product management, just announced he'd left the company. I asked him if this had anything to do with the ruckus over LiveJournal's elimination of unpaid, advertising-free accounts. "No," said Shellen, who worked at Blogger and then Google after the search giant bought the blog startup. "In social media, you have to have a thick skin." What did Shellen in was the 10-hour time difference between Moscow, where Sup is headquartered, and LiveJournal's San Francisco office. More » -
lj drama
SUP's Anton Nosik introduces LiveJournal users to European "customer service"
When SUP bought LiveJournal from SixApart, I'm sure the Russian company understood the financial details and the technological nuances, but I'm not sure it understood that the customer base is about one thing and one thing only — drama. At least, that's the impression I get from Anton Nosik in a recent interview with Izbrannoe, commenting on the March 12 move by the company to no longer offer free accounts (translated by russianswinga):They endlessly, during the entire existence of LJ promote initiatives, whose only purpouse is to bring harm to LJ, its founders, their goal is to criticize, destablilize and ruin our reputation.
More charmingly honest observations from Nosik after the jump. More » -
the chart
Bebo needs cash to keep its servers running
Now we know why Bebo's so eager for more cash. It needs more servers. According to Pingdom, Bebo has already been down for 12 hours and 28 minutes so far this year. Check out the full chart to see how 13 other social networks have fared so far. -
social networks
Brad Fitzpatrick wants to know who your friends are
Remember how NotchUp spammed us all alst week? Get ready for a lot more. Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder who noisily left Six Apart for Google last summer, has launched his first big project: a tool which identifies your friends across multiple social networks, so you can invite them all wherever you go. What this means: If you're sick of zombie bites on Facebook, you're going to hate the World Wide Web after Fitzpatrick gets done with it. But forget the spam issue: Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea on principle? More » -
explainer
How to stop reading Tumblr blogs
Tumblr differs from most blog software: It doesn't just let you post entries; it also provides an interface for reading the blogs of other Tumblr users. In that regard, it's duplicating a feature available on LiveJournal for a decade — and yet its users still manage to find it befuddling. "Right now I'm following 35 people," Connected Ventures cofounder Rickvy Van Veen writes on his personal blog.Most of those people know how to use Tumblr responsibly and only post when they have something worthwhile to say. Others don't. First execution: Julia Allison. 40 posts a day? Are you f—-ing kidding?
Executing friends is a great idea, Ricky! But what if you're like the New York Observer's Doree Shafrir — yes, the writer who recently profiled Tumblr CEO David Karp — and you don't know how to stop following someone on the site? Never fear, Valleywag's here to help you knock off your most annoying friends. More » -
forecasts
Valleywag's 25 predictions for 2008
Valleywag is of course known for its dead-on accuracy, so our predictions for 2008 need no introduction. Inside, my 25 predictions (made without inside information) cover the futures of Facebook, Google, Digg, YouTube, Twitter, the Wall Street Journal, Apple, Yahoo, Gawker Media, AOL, Dell, LOLcats, the president, and more. More » -
party report
For LiveJournal, Six Aparting is such sweet sorrow
Users of LiveJournal call it "defriending." As terrible as it sounds, defriending's not really that bad; it just means you're bored with someone and don't want to hear about their issues anymore. Or share yours with them. That, in essence, is what Six Apart, the San Francisco-based blog-software company, has decided to do with LiveJournal, the online community it acquired from Brad Fitzpatrick in 2005. Andrew Anker, Six Apart's vice president ofchopping the company into little bits for convenient and lucrative dispositioncorporate development, orchestrated the sale of LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media company which already runs a localized version of the site. With the sale, Anker and the rest of Six Apart's team are letting LiveJournal know, as gently as they can, that they're just not interested in its problems. More » -
geek love
What's Sup with Brad Fitzpatrick?
Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal, is a Silicon Valley archetype: The brilliant engineer and troubled young man. In noisily quitting Six Apart, the San Francisco-based software company which acquired his company two years ago, one of the reasons he gave was that he was tired of working on LiveJournal. Now Sup, the Russian company acquiring LiveJournal, has asked Fitzpatrick to join an advisory board meant to protect users' interests, and he's gladly agreed. Why the sudden change of mind? More » -
valleywag calendar
111 Minna mashup
There's Irish coffee and spontaneous meetups to be had, but the place to be tonight is 111 Minna, which is hosting two (!) simultaneous events tonight. All in today's Valleywag Calendar. More » -
livejournal
Six Apart exiles its troublesome child to Russia
Since acquiring LiveJournal in 2005, Six Apart has gotten little but grief from the blogging site. Now, at last, it's gotten some cash. The San Francisco-based blog-software company has sold LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media concern. Ostensibly, the purchase of LiveJournal two years ago was meant to improve Six Apart's Web technology and accelerate its entry into ad-supported blog publishing. Instead? More » -
lazy valleywag
How scary is Brad Fitzpatrick?
We hear that Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal creator recently hired by Google, has an "epic" costume. Well, we heard that from Fitzpatrick, actually. "Yo, rumor is you need to go down to Google and get a pic of Brad Fitz's costume," a mutual friend IMs. A drive down to Mountain View isn't really in the cards. But is there a helpful coworker who might break the Googleplex's dark veil of security and send Valleywag a photo? We'd be most obliged. And we promise not to rat you out to the Goostapo. (Photo by Randal Alan Smith) -
breaking
Google rushes to open itself up
Mark Zuckerberg, are you feeling scared? Google isn't just moving in on your turf, it's beating you to the punch. By almost a week. Since hiring Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and a proponent of open standards, Google has been rumored to be working on tools to let developers build software for multiple social networks. An announcement had been expected next Monday. That would have been a day before Facebook plans to unveil a new ad network to compete with Google's AdSense. Instead of being late, as rumored, Google's early. On Thursday, Google will unveil OpenSocial, a set of common software-development standards that Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ning, Salesforce.com, and Oracle have agreed to use. Call them the Google Gang. The Gang, in turn will allow developers like RockYou and iLike to develop one common widget which will work on any of their sites. The goal? To make it unattractive for developers to lock themselves into the Facebook platform. Boo! -
web 2.0 summit
Web 2.0 Summit returns to Web 1.9 roots
Can you believe that last week's Web 2.0 Summit was the fourth such conference? Its humble beginnings were barely in evidence, as venture capitalists, corporate biz-dev types, and M&A scouts seemed to outnumber the startup founders they were trying to hunt down. Friday afternoon was a return to the old school, however, with Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield and LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick among the presenters. Sadly, John Doerr, the expert inflater of the first dotcom bubble, did not cry. Check the photo gallery for the conference's final, terrifying orgy of schmoozing. Some participants were so exhausted that, by the closing cocktail party, they were making deals with their eyes closed. More » -
rumormonger
Six Apart considered a LiveJournal and Vox spinoff
We just heard an outlandish rumor: That San Francisco-based blogging company Six Apart, whose software powers many of the world's most popular blogs, considered splitting in two earlier this year, under former CEO Barak Berkowitz. But the company recently upgraded its CEO, replacing Berkowitz with executive Chris Alden, and a spinoff or sale is no longer on the table. By shedding its LiveJournal and Vox consumer blogging sites, Six Apart would have left behind enterprise blog service TypePad and the Movable Type software product — exactly the businesses new CEO Chris Alden ran before his promotion, which is likely why this old rumor is gaining fresh circulation. More » -
comments
Brad Fitzpatrick coming unplugged at Google?
From the comments, a fresh rumor about Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder widely believed to be working on social networks at Google. The commenter, who claims to work at Google, says Fitzpatrick is actually working on free, ad-supported Wi-Fi. Curious, since Google's Wi-Fi projects have faced trouble recently. A deal with San Francisco for free Wi-Fi fell apart thanks to Google partner EarthLink's straitened finances. Why would a tech star like Fitzpatrick work on such a seemingly doomed project? With that caveat, the report on Fitzpatrick's new project, from googleyes, after the jump. More » -
ideas
My ten awesome ideas for the big Internet sites (1% reward please)
Hi, I am a young person who goes to major web sites! I am "in the know" about technology so I have several good ideas for these sites, and I will list them here. ATTENTION PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR THESE SITES: If you read my idea and you use it, you have to pay me for it with 1% of your company. My first idea will finally make Yahoo a popular web site. More » -
burning man
LiveJournal founder does it in the desert
BLACK ROCK CITY — Rumors that the bigwigs of geekery are headed here en masse are rife in the fanciful world of Internet rumor — but proof is spotty on the playa-dust ground. The strongest contender for Big Geek on Campus so far is Brad Fitzpatrick, formerly of Six Apart fame, and now at Google. This tidbit actually transcends rumor, as Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal, has posted his future playa address on his own LiveJournal blog. If he's a very clever boy, he will discover the Wi-Fi-fu that makes updating his LJ from the desert possible, but in the meantime, we are having daydreams of drunkenly invading his camp when he gets here and demanding that he friend us. (Photo by Brad Fitzpatrick) -
social networks
Six Apart's Brad boy is Googling a new idea
A Valleywag spy reports sighting Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and outgoing Six Apart executive, at Philz Coffee in San Francisco. Fitzpatrick was there with book publisher and geek icon Tim O'Reilly and David Recordon, a former Six Apart engineer who left to join VeriSign last year. The three were working on a presentation on "social network portability." Now, that's no surprise — Fitzpatrick has been openly interested in the idea of swapping personal information between websites for a while, and he and Recordon — who we hear, by the way, may be rejoining Six Apart — helped create the OpenID standard, which helps accomplish just that. No, what makes this geek sighting fascinating is that Fitzpatrick, we hear — though neither he nor Google has confirmed this — is headed to Google. And Google has been trying to get back in the social-network game. More » -
conflicts of interest
Six Apart funnels donations to backer's pet charities
LiveJournal, the online community run by blog-software maker Six Apart is rowdy, contentious, and mostly undeserving of attention. But occasionally its cantankerous users, in their perpetual, pointless war with Six Apart management, make a decent point. For example, this one: Why do three of the four nonprofits chosen to benefit from a recent sale of paid LiveJournal accounts have ties to early Six Apart investor Joi Ito? Ito no longer serves on Six Apart's board, but he's the CEO and founder of Neoteny, a Japanese venture capital firm which provided Six Apart with much of its initial backing. Neoteny chairman Jun Makihara has a board seat. And Six Apart CEO Barak Berkowitz previously worked for Neoteny. I'd never say the organizations Ito's linked to — the EFF, Creative Commons, and Witness — aren't doing good work. But it all seems very cozy. So cozy that the supposedly pro-transparency company didn't care to disclose the fact to customers. -
brad fitzpatrick
LiveJournal creator leaves as Six Apart fails to spin
Word is that Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal and chief architect of Six Apart, is leaving the troubled blog-software company. And the fact that you're hearing about from a gossip blog rather than the transparency-loving company is itself a sign of how deep the problems run. Fitzpatrick, who sold his company, Danga Interactive, to Six Apart two years ago, has vested his shares, declared his boredom with Six Apart, and after weighing offers from Google and Facebook, has chosen to head to Google, a source close to Fitzpatrick says. The only reason that Six Apart management hasn't announced it, the source adds, is that they can't figure out how to spin it. Here, let me help, guys! It's bad. And Fitzpatrick's departure is just the tip of Six Apart's reality-denying iceberg. More » -
breakdowns
San Francisco datacenter renamed "364.98 Main"
365 Main, the troubled datacenter operator, has finished its investigation into the failure at its San Francisco facility that knocked some of the Internet's most well-known websites, from Craigslist to LiveJournal to Technorati, offline back in July. Ridiculously, the company first tried to blame PG&E for the failure, knowing full well that its clients pay it for reliable power even in a blackout. (Equally ridiculously, I ran a suspect tip that a drunk employee had wreaked havoc in the datacenter.) Now, the company has completely exonerated itself, pinning the blame on a component in its generators. Here's why you still shouldn't believe a word the company says. My analysis, and the company's press release, after the jump. More » -
news you can use
The Great Internet Crash of '07
The Onion, America's Finest News Source, has an eerily prescient report on what would happen if the Internet were to suddenly disappear, including the devastating toll it would take on the blogging community. Says one LiveJournal user, after years of online documentation disappeared, "I feel like control-alt-deleting myself." Apparently, Nigeria's economy, balanced so carefully on the backs of 419 scams, would be the first casualty. More » -
pic of the day
Livejournal's romantic rivals make nice
Could this be the world's most awkward photograph? On the left, Brad Fitzpatrick, founder of Livejournal, the online diary site, and still a key exec at the company that bought him out, San Francisco's Six Apart. Also at last night's party in San Francisco's South of Market district, on the right of the snap, Artur Bergman, a colleague who had a widely-known affair with Fitzpatrick's wife. Correction: former colleague, and former wife. More » -
livejournal
Three lactivists show up for nurse-in outside Six Apart HQ
Only three militant breastfeeding mothers showed up to forcibly nurse their babies in front of the San Fran headquarters of Six Apart, according to a member of the blogging company. The mammary mommies are mad at 6A property LiveJournal for blocking their user icons — 100x100 images of babies breastfeeding, with aereolas showing. More » -
to-do
To-Do: Meet Markoff, the LJ guy, your maker
Great weekend ahead, and I'm not just saying that 'cause Valleywag takes a half-day tomorrow. Here — meet someone important by Memorial Day and pump 'em for info. More » -
brad fitzpatrick
Programming legend JWZ snarks Brad Fitzpatrick
Now that is how to be "brash and outspoken." Last night, LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick asked on his blog, "How should I hack?" and offered a poll. More » -
remainders
Remainders: LJ boob job
- San Francisco PR firm Bite interviews the San Jose Mercury News senior web editor about the Merc's new media offerings. Sez the editor about the popularity of the Merc's American Idol blog, "Compelling content still rules the day." And by "compelling content," he means "celebrity trash." (Gawker Media heartily agrees.) [Bitemarks]
- A reader responds to the Apple shared bathroom incident: "SCO (a.k.a. Santa Cruz Operation), when it was still in Santa Cruz, posted similar signs after customers on a late tour of the facility suprised a group of nude hot-tubers. good times."
- USA Today manages to sound like it reads books, and it gives tepid approval to Douglas Coupland's JPod, a novel about game developers that outclasses his '95 novel Microserfs. [USA Today]
- SF Chron tech blogger Alan Saracevic asks about the $100 laptop (meant to put a computer in the hands of every child), "Why does everyone need a laptop?" So we can get more blog traffic, Alan. Geez, catch up with everyone, okay? [SF Gate]
- The Boob Nazi battle on LiveJournal — where militant breastfeeders fight LJ's abuse team — gets attention on the LJ Abuse Blog, which calls the affair "Nipplegate." [Exposing LJ Abuse — NSFW]
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livejournal
"Boob Nazi" breastfeeders battle LiveJournal abuse team
LiveJournal drama! Like, OMG, we haven't heard of that before. But seriously, this time it's between the blog hosting site's abuse team and some of California's militant breastfeeding advocates. More » -
remainders
Remainders: LiveJournal
loves popupsis so sorry- The Guardian confirms: Bloggers are loudmouths, and Glenn Reynolds has an opinion. [Guardian]
- Blog platform Automattic bypasses the usual startup interview question: "But how will you make any money?" [Business 2.0]
- Sick of dumb corporate names? Salon is old-school sick of dumb corporate names. [Salon, 90s]
- Slate performs a mental autopsy of Stefan Eriksson's crashed Ferrari (half-pictured). [Slate]
- Use Firefox, get banned from LiveJournal: The site's new terms of service give them the right to kill your account if you use
a pop-upan ad blocker. UPDATE: The lawyers snuck that in, and LiveJournal's gonna fix it. [Slashdot and LiveJournal Support]
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livejournal
A LiveJournal contract is worth the paper it's written on
How much cash does Six Apart really need? Just as the blogging company takes more venture capital, its community site, LiveJournal, finally slides from ad-free to ad-friendly. Here's the history of one clause in LiveJournal's "Social Contract." More »
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