First Think, THEN Ink.

Once upon a time, at the end of the previous century, there was a guy named Brad.



Brad

Brad lived in Oregon. He was headed off to college in Seattle and he wanted to stay in touch with his friends from High School. Sure, there was email and snail mail, but for a young programmer, that simply wouldn't do.

Brad's solution was to build an online journaling website so his friends could read all about his exploits and he, in turn, could read theirs. This program was called "LiveJournal."



Brad designed the program in a very specific way - the comments were "threaded," meaning that not only could someone respond to the person who posted a journal entry, but people could also read other remarks posted, then comment to other commenters and start a conversation with them.

Since everyone using Brad's program already knew each other, that was fine. But soon, this circle of friends wanted to include some of their friends in on this "journaling" thing. So the group started to slowly expand, as the people using it passed on the info about it to others.

Eventually, this became a lot more tricky as friends of friends of friends wanted to take part. Brad's solution this time was to create "invite codes," a special key to unlock LJ that were given to users already on the site that could be sent to other people to allow them to join.

This accidentally became a genius element for two reasons. The first was that everyone joining the site was being vouched for by someone who was already a part of it. Essentially that meant that all the users were approved by at least one person who was already in the group. And the second reason was that it turned the site itself into an exclusive club that you could only join, if you qualified. That made getting a "membership" that much more enticing.

Soon after, there was an explosion as people of all sorts learned about LJ and wanted to get in on the trend. The invite codes were eventually dropped and anyone could sign up make an account. Communities formed - quite literally - A "community" was a group of people who had an interest in a specific topic: from aardvarks to zebras, from ABBA to ZZ Top, from Albania to Zimbabwe... You could think of a topic you enjoyed, make an LJ about it and people would join to discuss it. friendships were forged, as people read all about the lives of each other. And people eventually met each other "in real life." Just remember to put your photos under a "cut tag" because dial up would slow your computer down to a crawl if you didn't!

There even was a new word coined for the phenomenon - "blogging," an abbreviated portmanteau for "web log." In just four years, LiveJournal went from one guy's concept of keeping his friendships going to a million accounts!

And there were the knockoffs.

Because Brad was more interested in people being able to communicate with each other, rather than profiteering, the code he wrote to create LJ was open source, meaning that anyone could come along, take that code and create their own blog site, too. And people did. And then there were other services that intended to cater to niche groups. One of the most notable of those was a site called "myspace."



About the same time as the Millionth LiveJournal Account was created, myspace began.

myspace was a direct result of one of those LJ knockoff sites: "Friendster," or rather, myspace itself was a knockoff of Friendster. And the ambitions were high. Where LiveJournal covered mostly North American territory and a bit of Europe, myspace was planned to be available, globally, and it exploded, globally.

The advantage myspace had over LiveJournal was a major corporation behind them with a whole lot of money. NewsCorp, one of Rupert Murdoch's properties, purchased myspace and were using every trick in the book to get more and more people to sign up. In the same length of time it took LJ to acquire a million different accounts, myspace got one-hundred million.

The problem was myspace was awkwardly designed, had an unattractive color palette, had a difficult to negotiate interface, added a very unpleasant web log that made just writing an entry a challenge and everyone got a friend named "Tom" as soon as they signed up.



Tom

But myspace had something LJ didn't seem to have: celebrities.

Stars from the world of music, film, television, comedy were all creating accounts on myspace. And these celebrities were "interacting" with "regular people." There was a lot of self-promotion as these luminaries would talk about their projects, post photos, list off tour dates and even write blog posts on that clunky blog. People would post the accounts they liked best in their "Top 8," a list of myspace users that could be seen by anyone who visited your myspace.

And as myspace began to take off, Facebook opened to the general public.



TheFacebook, as it was originally known, sprung from what some might consider a sordid place. "Hot or Not dot com" was a site that let you look at photographs of people and asked you to select a score for each person from 10, being Hot down to 1, being not. It was, essentially, a "ranking" website and it's simplicity helped make its popularity.



A typical "Hot or Not" Page

That site inspired Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg to create "Facemash," where he placed two photos next to each other and asked the user to select the one they thought was "hotter."



Zuckerberg - did he post his photo on Facemash?

This evolved into an online version of something that already existed. A "facebook," as it is often referred to by collegians, is a guide to students of a university class year, showing a submitted photo, a name, hometown and perhaps name of high school for each enrollee. It was a way of getting to know your fellow undergrads.

Zuckerberg wanted to create a version of that for the web, but when Harvard dragged their feet, he just went ahead and did it, himself. The resulting website became an instant hit. After it went viral at Harvard, the other seven Ivy League Schools joined, then other elite schools such as MIT and Stanford were included, eventually leading to all Colleges being added and elite high schools were also permitted to join.

Again, like LiveJournal's "invite codes," the requirement of being part of the scholastic community gave the site a certain cachet that made people want to join. And, like LJ, Facebook eventually opened to anyone who wanted to create an account, over the age of thirteen.

Last, but certainly not least was the arrival of Twitter.




As the blogging craze peaked, there had to be a backlash. Not everyone was a writer but they still wanted the jolt of having people hear what they had to say. Enter twitter. With a strict limit of 140 characters per entry, you had to be brief. Essentially twitter was the blog for people who hated blogging.

And a celebrity couple helped to catapult the site, nearly immediately. Ashton Kutcher was at the height of his pop culture power, starring in the popular Fox sitcom, "That '70s Show" and was creator and host of MTV's celebrity prank show "Punk'd." His then wife, actress Demi Moore, (AplusK and MrsKutcher as they called themselves on the site), joined twitter and got a lot of their celebrity friends to open accounts there, too.

Where myspace had the potential for celebrity interaction, Twitter promised direct contact with the stars. Of course, millions scrambled to join, and Kutcher was the first person to reach a million followers, something that seemed incredibly impressive at the time.

But let's get back to the old El Jay. Right before Twitter was about to begin and as these other sites where people began interacting with each other were growing, Brad was approached by a group that wanted to purchase LiveJournal.

SixApart, a company that already had a kind of web log service on its roster (Moveable Type), purchased Danga Interactive (the company that owned LiveJournal) from Brad at the start of 2005. But as soon as the purchase was announced, there was a severe sense of foreboding from the userbase.

Brad had previously made a promise to the users: no ads anywhere, ever on LiveJournal. Most other sites had text ads or photo ads as a part of their presentation. LJ was never designed for that. It, like the internet itself, was created to be a communications outlet first, not an advertising one. So, when 6A came in, the users knew that ads were going to arrive with them. After all, no one buys a social media site to NOT make money.

SixApart's purchase of LJ, and their attempts to monetize the platform were hampered by a series of missteps that caused many users to recoil. One of 6A's early actions dealt directly with censorship - the ability to use icons to show what you want as you post an entry or comment.

Attempting to dictate what was permissible for the already established userbase may have been fine to make the platform safe for advertisers, but it did not sit well at all with the people active on LiveJournal. This happened several times, created a lot of strife and caused many users to want to preserve their journals before leaving the platform for some other, less controlling service.

6A frequently issued changes in policy without consulting the users first. Though it was clear they were harming the very people who were what they purchased the website for, they pressed ahead. They even created a brand new blogging service that they called "VOX" to siphon users off of LJ. In that way they could ignore the "no ads on LiveJournal" rule that Brad had promised, because anyone joining VOX would no longer be on LJ.

The people at 6A made so many blunders that they eventually created an anonymous account which they called "theljstaff," their way of attempting to correct things without attaching a particular person to it. Let's call that what it was: an attempt to hide from the users, never a good sign. They even held an election to create a user/staff liaison from candidates who used the site, and that went as well as everything else they attempted.

But there was something else going on with LiveJournal that most people in the West weren't aware of.

Russia was starting to change under their leader, Vladimir Putin. Putin was the Russian leader from 2000 to 2008, and a number of Russian citizens were not fond of his rule. Though the country was claimed to be a "democracy," it seemed quite clear that this was a front and that Putin was controlling elections, eliminating contenders, preventing any opposition and blocking any criticism of his government.

In Russia, LiveJournal was, in fact, the place where Russian celebrities, political figures and other luminaries had accounts. Known as Zhivoy Zhurnal, or ZheZhe for short, It was, essentially what Twitter was in the United States: the place where everyone wanted to be.

It was also the platform where those that opposed Russian rule communicated with each other.

After completely botching just about everything to do with LiveJournal, 6A finally decided to offload it to the only interested buyer that would match their price: A company in Russia called SUP.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to realize that *someone* in Russia was trying to find and weed out the dissidents that were coming for Putin and his government, and soon after this Russian company took control of the site, the organization built on that platform to go against Putin had severely diminished and essentially ended.

And now we flash ahead to 2022, when another takeover of another social media site happened. Elon Musk, long time head of Tesla, the man behind SpaceX and the efforts to get humans to Mars suddenly, and almost defiantly said he would purchase twitter for the tidy sum of 44 Billion dollars. People were curious as to why Musk seemed intent on purchasing this platform, as he had no experience in social media, except for using it, like anyone else on the site.

After some haggling and jockeying, the purchase finally went through and Musk took ownership of twitter in October 2022: a new toy. He had revealed his intentions to revamp the entirety of twitter, for his own gratification.



Musk

Musk has stated that he feels that "free speech" has been harmed and claimed to want to rectify this. One of the hinted actions included reinstating accounts of twitter users that were banned; the most prominent of these being former President of the United States trump.

Though that hasn't happened, so far, a whole lot of wild actions have taken place, none of which has improved the usage for those people with accounts nor has it helped his stated goals. Just what is going on here?

When examining SixApart's purchase of LiveJournal and relating it to Musk's acquisition of twitter. The community is what they were buying. It's the community that makes any social media platform. Without the people, all you have is the hardware and software. Brad never would have created that original site if there were no people to write to - and that site never would have grown into something a company wanted to purchase if an enormous mass of people didn't find it worthwhile.

But how do you "control" the community once you own the site?

At the very least, Musk has been trying to cease all criticism of himself by anyone on twitter. Accounts have been banned or shadowbanned or simply quashed.

But, when you reveal your weakness to any trolls on the internet, they exploit it, so more and more parody accounts, more jokes, more insults and more slams started coming as soon as it was clear this was what Musk didn't want. And that led to more action against the offenders.

Away from the online parodies and reactions that were starting to explode, something to remember about twitter is that, similarly to the Russian part of LiveJournal, people were using that platform in a very serious way: to communicate and to organize.

Over the years, time and again, in Moldova, in Iran, in Tunisia, and even in Ukraine, after LJ was all but dismantled in the Cyrillic world, twitter became to go-to place to keep track of what was happening, of police state circumstances, of human rights violations. And it was the place to record video clips and photographs of offenses for anyone who had an account to view.

So the question must be asked:

Does Elon Musk realize that his personal antics on this site could potentially cause harm to populations who rely on the site to stay in touch, or, perhaps, was that his intention? Is he trying to, as the Russians essentially did with their version of LiveJournal, dismantle the platform to prevent any more action from the rank and file against the upper echelon?

But is Musk actively and knowingly attempting to help particular rulers who see revolution in their futures and want a helping hand to stop it? Who can know?

It's been a long strange trip from a high school coder in the Pacific Northwest to the richest man on the planet. And this ride isn't over. It's just a matter of where we are collectively going next.

The one important lesson we need to learn is, we must keep control of our communities, not have them taken over by those who don't care about them, or us. It's through communication that we have our greatest strength, and that's what those in power fear most.

Let's keep the conversation going.

UPDATE: Musk reinstated trump's twitter account as of November 19, 2022 based on a popularity poll he conducted.

The biggest positive of disabling my Facebook, which I did this morning, is simply getting the time back that was spent on it. And that's time that I can use back here, both for posting and reading. I had disabled FB back in 2012, returned last October, and nearly lasted a year, and I would call it a "bad" year, before pulling the plug again.

It also frees up time that I need to use for writing. I have two projects I'm working on that I hope will be worth time from other folks eventually. One of those is the novel, which I already know needs a rewrite, at least the middle section which is going to go much faster than I currently have it moving. I've got a handle on it and I really almost want to go back and fix those sections now, rather than going to the end of the work and then doing a proper rewrite. But I'm resisting that urge because of the very word "rewrite." You can't rewrite until the writing has concluded. That's my approach.

I am considering a sequel novel already, but that might not be viable or useful because an idea that I thought would make an intriguing television series is, according to a contact in the industry, isn't very salable. So, that might become the next novel. And I think I'm going to want to have a change of pace from the material that I'm working with in this piece. Still haven't ruled it out for a future story tho.

And of course there's the relief of not having LJ Idol to deal with on a weekly basis, now that it has concluded. In case you hadn't heard, the winner was marlawentmad. I finished a very respectable second.

Idol really took a lot more time than you might imagine, as there was the issue of deciding what to write, coming up with a story, then crafting it into the piece I submitted. The great thing is that LJ Idol definitely helps with my process for preparing and executing a story, so that is invaluable, especially where I'm at right now.

Currently, there's no clear answer to if there will be another full season of Idol. Gary, the guy that runs the show, has already stated there will be a mini-season coming soon. But there are a lot of questions, not the least of which is where will it happen? LiveJournal is on the bubble since we are a Russian entity. And nobody, so far, is treating Dreamwidth like it's a reasonable replacement. It is still the attic for your old LJ entries and that's about it.

But that's not for me to figure out. I'm just back here, and, at least for the time being, glad to be back.

I haven't been posting "normal" entries in my LJ Account for awhile now, using it only as the place where I post my LJ Idol entries for the writing competition. Likewise, I haven't been reading your entries, since my time was spent reading through the entries of the other contestants and making comments there. I feel like I have failed my LJ friends because of this, and I do apologize for that, but there is an element behind it.

The whole "Яussian" issue - the fact that we were acquired by the Russian side of LiveJournal definitely has had an effect. Really, I have a bellyful of Russia right now. I hear about Russia every night. And let's face it. We don't really know much of anything about what's going on with our Russian owners. I can tell you that a few of my long time LJ friends deleted their journals specifically because of this.

When I purchased a permanent account, I really thought it would outlast me, or at least would last longer than I would find a use for it. Now, even though it's likely an irrational fear, I don't feel completely safe sharing on this platform anymore. We don't know anyone who is in charge of this service. We don't know what issues those that are in charge of it examine. And it's within the unease of all that we don't know about what happens here that creates a place that is the opposite of where you would want to put your most intimate thoughts and share your most personal stories.

The current LJ Idol season is coming to a close. Tonight is a voting results night, and it's possible I will not survive. I have resolved to stop using LiveJournal at the end of the current LJ Idol competition, and I suspect that end will come before the end of the year. That means I have to make some decisions.

I have to decide if I want to delete this journal and if I do delete, do I use the nuclear option, that deletes every comment I ever made to every journal and community I ever visited. Or do I friendslock the entire journal? Or do I just leave it in place, as is?

A reason not to delete is being able to access journals that I was friends to, anyone that had their own journal locked that I was on the list for would be lost to me forever. But does that really matter, if the friends are no longer posting here?

Another reason not to delete is that I said I never would. Under normal circumstances, I thought deleting was a selfish move, that hurt the other people who were still here. And especially the nuclear option that deleted the comments posted in everyone else's journal. Part of me still believes it's somewhat selfish to delete - especially nuclear style. When people comment to your journal, it's not just "YOUR" journal anymore. I absolutely believe that.

But I do have my mirrored account at dreamwidth. Basically everything that is here got moved there (and I'll likely do another transfer over of the entries from the Idol season also). All is not lost.

But there will be loss. Some people who are still here aren't going to leave. I know this because I floated the concept in my entry titled: Let's Just Deal With... where I suggested we needed to make a break from this place and collectively move to Dreamwidth. "Lukewarm" would be a gross exaggeration of the response.

Or just not use this type of platform anymore. Facebook does have the option for writing essays, and they have the possibility of going viral, if they're publicly posted.

I do know that my LJ time is now severely limited, no matter what happens, meaning that this will be one of my final thinkposts here on the old El Jay. But maybe I'll make a go of it on DW.

http://penpusher.dreamwidth.org/

By now, everyone you are knowing that still an active account has on LiveJournal mentioned at least the new Terms of the Service. This is not for to create no worry and no concern. Anyway, you must agree to be reading this!

Before, people ask why servers were sent to Russia. It is to provide better, what word it is? surveillance? Nyet! Not yet. It provide better support.

People believe that the Russian side of LJ and the so-called western side go separate. But we are friends and so now, Russian side help on other side by being better support. We work together and we prove that we are good and very good for you.

So if see you something that sounded not normal, it is. Welcome to new normal!

Welcome to LiveJournal.

Hey!

This is my first ever cross post from my account at Dreamwidth, my alternate home on the internet. When I first got this Dreamwidth account, I did do a "First Post" on March 24, 2006, in what was my 5th Anniversary of my LJ. Unfortunately, that post was devoured when I transferred the entirety of my LiveJounal to Dreamwidth so that record is gone, but my journal is preserved, which I guess is the important thing.

It doesn't feel like almost 16 years of blogging. Or maybe it does. Or it really hasn't been because I took off months at a time when I wasn't writing here at all. But I do need a place to write, and there really isn't another like LJ er, DW.

I would make the following notes about the transfer.

1. It was extremely easy.

Despite going back through 2001 (and the handful of entries dated prior to that), it was just a couple of clicks to get the transfer set up and running.

2. It was successful.

Though I have heard that some people have dropped entries, my journal was transferred successfully without any issue - a feat that could be because I have a permanent account on LJ and now a paid account on DW. Though I also transferred a couple of free LJ accounts over (with a lot fewer entries, of course) and that seemed to have been fine.

3. All your LJ links remain LJ Links.

If you reference a LiveJournal post in one of your archived entries being transferred to DW, that reference will still point to the LJ link. That means, if you actually want to turn your DW journal into one that is self contained, you would have to go through and change those links manually to connect to the DW post you were referencing.

I expect that the same would be true going from DW to LJ. So that would be inconvenient, for certain... especially for me because I have linked pertinent entries to each other frequently and it would take a lot of patience to comb through all of the archive to adjust them all!

4. LJ user links remain unchanged.

If you have written the name of an LJ user in an entry, and that person had since changed their username, the original name still shows up in the DW post. I think that if you clicked the name, the link goes to a "non existent" user page. Again, this would have to be corrected on a post by post basis, manually.

5. When you edit your entry on DW, it automatically gets updated to your LJ!

I discovered this just now, but I had a typo on my DW entry and I noticed it when I was reading through the LJ version. I corrected it there, then found another on Dreamwidth. When I corrected THAT one, and came back to the LJ version, it was already fixed! Handy Dandy!

Meanwhile, are you on Dreamwidth? if you are, please add me to your journal there... I know a couple of folks like binaryorchid, jazzy_dave and ragdoll have done so already!

And yeah! On DW, to link someone's journal name in an entry, the term is

[user name=username] with the "[ ]" standing in for the "< >," just to get you up to speed on the HTML.

And if you have any other questions about transferring your journal to DW, let me know.

Dean and I have been trying to pinpoint the time frame that he and I added each other on Livejournal. He found a post from 2003 and I am still positive that it was sometime in 2001. For close to 15 years we have followed each other's lives and cheered each other on through jobs and relationships.. ups and downs. Through loss and expectations, our own and other peoples..

We are still here. We are older and we have smile lines and life under our belt. And we are here.

I remember the fantastical birthday posts that he used to write and I still remember the first one that he did for me. Seattle made me feel very alone. But Livejournal was this balm that made everything that was hard just a little easier. You had this social safety net that you could pour your heart out to and they helped get you through.

Dean was one of those people for me. I am thankful for his friendship and for his continued part in my life.

I am very thankful that I got to hug this person today that has been a part of my life for so very long.

** Note: This entry was written by theda for my blog! It's a science experiment!

Twitter made it official this week that they were going to permit "longer tweets." If you're familiar with how twitter works, you know that the standard tweet permitted was 140 characters. There actually was a rationale for that number: they wanted the tweet to be able to fit inside a single SMS (Short Message Service) message, which has a limitation of 160 characters.

( Apparently people, in their desire to post... )

My process of writing varies from project to project and from when I was younger to now. And it's certainly informed by all the experience I have had from writing and, of course, from living. So today I'm a different, and I believe better writer than I was even when I started this LJ, almost 13 years ago. I'd better be better, otherwise I just wasted thirteen years!

Maybe I was pretty good then. And maybe the changes aren't so apparent. But the facts are I have a lot more stuff in my writer's toolbox that can be useful than I did back in 2001. And that's a huge positive.

But also the topics I write about have shifted somewhat, and when you talk about LiveJournal as in why have people left the service, this is something to examine. If people consider their LJs as simply self-involved commentary from their younger days, they may feel that the journals they used back then were something embarrassing, something to forget, and that's clearly part of the reason why people may be reluctant to return.

( As a writer, I have... )

I'm thinking of the people on my friendslist that don't post anymore. I'm wondering if they ever even think about their LiveJournal accounts, if they ever visit them, ever sneak a peek at their friendslists, ever even read back through their LJs.

I love reading my archives. There's so much great stuff there, partially because of all the great people that commented. That's why I said I would never delete this journal. When others post to it, it's no longer just "mine."

But I'm wondering if there is anything that might get these great people back to at least poke around.

Really, the issue with LJ is it's something you shouldn't have to be "forced" or "coerced" into performing. That's very counter-intuitive when it comes to the process.

And as ravenfeather recently pointed out in my most recent "LJ Promotion" post, by placing a comic in the comments, some people associate LJ with their High School years and they've outgrown that.

I guess if you came to El Jay after that time, the stigma isn't there, but the question remains:

If you weren't on LiveJournal, what sort of stuff might bring you back... and maybe as the true first question: what keeps you here now? What are you getting from LJ that makes you still use it?

In Promoting LiveJournal - Step One, I focused on the elements that might drive people to the site - celebrities, and those that love/hate them.

Traffic is king when it comes to social media, so you have to consider what would get people to visit the site, and then, hopefully, stay around.

ravenfeather offered up a pretty nice little concept that might entice celebs to come back - some sort of program that could donate a portion of proceeds to the celeb's charity of choice, possibly based on clicks, views, responses, or some combination. It might be a bit difficult to institute in a way that doesn't create some problems or issues (and maybe long-time users would take offense?), but it really seems like something to consider. It could also be a "test market" for what could eventually be a "profit sharing" system from providing content for ALL users, not just the famous ones... and wouldn't a program like THAT be a way of getting the traffic back?!

I really feel that everything is in place, from a user standpoint, for LJ to explode all over again. Well, most everything. dabroots pointed out that when he goes to other sites like The New York Times or other similar news or entertainment sites, there are buttons that allow you one touch to post an article to your Facebook, twitter, reddit, stumbleupon, and a whole bunch of other places, but no blue pencil for LiveJournal.

( In fact, LJ doesn't have much... )