Comments on: Six Apart sells LiveJournal. Baroo??

By: skyliner

skyliner — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:08:43 +0000

SUP say they will be bringing back Brad Fitzpatrick to be on the LiveJournal Advisory Board.

As for SUP itself, while their capital is clearly of Russian origin, their management team seems very international: founder and CEO Andrew Paulson is an American who, apart from building and selling successful businesses in Moscow, has lived in Paris, London and NYC; marketing director Benjamin Wegg-Prosser has cut his teeth at the Guardian and has worked as the director of strategic communications for the British Prime Minister Tony Blair; strategy director Edward Shenderovich has spent years developing tech businesses in San Francisco and then some more teaching in Italy before moving back to Russia last year, or so I hear. A rather colorful bunch.

By: zephoria

zephoria — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:21:20 +0000

I’m posting using MovableType, not Blogger. MT is a tool and I very much appreciate it, but it is not a SNS. Blogging communities with articulated friends lists like LJ and Xanga are.

By: tsgeisel

tsgeisel — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:08:47 +0000

I’m finding it amusing that LJ is the only SNS that you feel passionate about, and yet you’re posting using blogger.

I know, the right tool for the right job, but still…I’m amused.

By: tsgeisel

tsgeisel — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:06:41 +0000

I’m finding it amusing that LJ is the only SNS that you feel passionate about, and yet you’re posting using blogger.

I know, the right tool for the right job, but still…I’m amused.

By: Snyggast

Snyggast — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:10:32 +0000

American Jeffrey McManus of Scottish ancestry who’s on the left side of the political spectrum, I assume. I think ‘people’ here are simply talking about the current state of Russian politics in ‘general.’ ..no need to be anal.

By: Jeffrey McManus

Jeffrey McManus — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:24:37 +0000

It is weird to me to hear people discuss “Russians,” “Americans” or “Japanese” as if they’re a single homogeneous group with similarly-aligned motives. It seems really 19th-century, you know?

By: Bertil

Bertil — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:09:41 +0000

Russia? Which one? I believe they are several countries with this name:
- one is a lawless digital anarchy, from the Ultima hackers, Virus Kings and Spam Czars to MP3.com; couldn’t care less about sexuality unless you are selling it (in which case they already did it for you, too late);
- another one is a regime so hard on dissidents it doesn’t have to push to get Banana republic scores, and doesn’t even need anymore to resolve to the classical political “Nuke” option: make believe the opposition is made of. . . Horrors of horrors: gay people. Good thing, because there is not such thing as gay people in good Russia.
- yet another one is a mad mix of Oil magnates, their “wifes”, Popes with a feverish followings, and Kmlelmwmer (How you write that word?) fiddlers.

By: Rose

Rose — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:44:59 +0000

As an lj inhabitant for years and years, I’m at a loss to know what to make of this. The small subgroup I hang out with are posting a number of background articles to SUP, which – more than strikethrough, more than any of the current outrage about the ‘flagging’ system – gives me concerns about the future of lj as an environment which allows such a diversity of voices.

Hi, by the way. I’ve been reading your blog for a while, ever since I attended the edna.au conference (which was fabulous!) in Melbourne earlier this year. I was the one down the back who went w00t! when you mentioned HP fan fic.

Rose

By: RN3AOH

RN3AOH — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:54:52 +0000

While SUP might “have an understanding of the Russian segment”, I cannot say they are very popular among such, having been caught several times logging in as other users, with lots of publicity fallout, caught adding counters and not removing them but saying they did, and other stuff, emphasis on “caught”. (I can’t spare the time for tracking down the relevant links right now, but the noise kept reaching me even though I’ve abandoned LJ years ago and don’t even read the Russian side of the net much these days either.) Whatever support they do have has mostly to do with simplifying payment options drastically, since getting money out of Russia is a major pain in the posterior, and with actual Russian-speaking Abuse Team.

What makes it very, very important on this side of the Atlantic, though, is that for most of Russia’s blogging history, unlike the rest of the world, where “A Livejournal is a blog” was true, in Russia, “A blog is a Livejournal” was true instead, even the word “blog” itself was not in common usage up until 2005 or so. Only very recently this started to change, and this had more to do with SUP coming in and significant activist exodus due to suspicions of abuse of powers for political reasons, than it had to do with competing local services showing up.

I am inclined to believe this has to do with Livejournal’s political importance in Russia more than with anything else — delaying the announcement until just after the elections were over is very likely to have more to do with the outrage that would happen if it were announced before the elections…

By: museumfreak

museumfreak — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:12:45 +0000

danah:

what dan said, with the addition of pointing out that SUP actually *bought* the entire LJ staff as part of the deal, and put Brad on the advisory board, so this doesn’t change who is in power in the same sweeping way that the 6A sale did. After reading lots of communities, the general consensus is a) lots of “in soviet russia” jokes and b)lots of confusion/i don’t know what to make of this. the support team is feeling a little gobsmacked, because normally we hear things like this first and SUP wanted to control the release of the news. at the same time, we know that SUP has been really good to our russian userbase and to us as a support team, and they have money to throw about and the incentives to throw it at LJ in a way that 6A doesn’t. Your point about the other language communities is well taken, but 6A didn’t understand them either.

–kathy