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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]
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]
livejournal
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
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.
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 »
11:11 PM on Fri Dec 21 2007
By Nick Douglas
11,743 views,
28 comments
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 ofMore »
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 »
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.
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.
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.
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 »
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