LiveJournal on the Verge of Collapse

At the midst of the terrible recession, on the day, when Microsoft announced 5,000 employees workforce cuts, information on the 12 to 20 employees lay offs by LiveJournal does not look neither surprising, nor unexpected. However, if think about the total number of employees in the LiveJournal San Francisco office as 28 employees only, you understand that this cut might be really fatal for the LJ bloggers platform functioning. Valleywag reports that the social-media pioneer laid off all of its product managers and engineers, “leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers - which speaks to a website to be left on life support.” Matt Berardo, a Yahoo executive hired on last summer, has also left.

Founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a way to keep his friends from high school updated about his activities, LiveJournal was among the first blogging services and social networks. The company was bought in 2005 by blogging-software company Six Apart and then sold two years later to Russian online-media company SUP.

According to the statement from LiveJournal, the company’s servers, technical operations, administration and customer-service teams will remain in the United States. However, global product development and design now will be coordinated out of the Moscow office.

Andrew Paulson

The company’s Moscow-based management has told employees it blames the "global economic downturn" - the kind of pat excuse every boss is giving for layoffs, even when mismanagement or a bad business plan is really to blame.

The brutal, abrupt cuts suggest something different: That Sup founder Andrew Paulson (above), who paid an estimated $30 million for LiveJournal a little over a year ago, has realized his expensive mistake in buying at the top of the bubble. Someone familiar with the company tells us Paulson lost the CEO job last summer to Annelies van den Belt, a former News Corp. executive, and was given the meaningless title of chairman; he’s essentially out of the company now.

Free Automatic Blog Backup Online

Not long ago, I have presented the free blog backup solution BlogBackupr. In this publication, I will show you one more way to backup your valuable blog content - blog backup system by Techrigy. Blog backup is very important because in the event your content is lost, you have the straightforward and simple way to restore it is fast. Furthermore, blog owner is able to store his blog backup anywhere, export it, and transfer it to any other compatible platform.

Blog Backup Online

The project is currently in beta testing stage and has several limitations like:

1. 50 MB limit.

To get more space allocation, all you need to do is just send the administration an email request at morespace@techrigy.com.

2. Blogging platform limitation. Blogs hosted on the following platform types are qualified for free backups:

* Blogger
* WordPress
* TypePad
* Friendster
* LiveJournal
* Serendipity
* Windows Live Space
* Movable Type
* Terapad
* Vox
* Multiply

3. Switch Blog Platforms

You can easily switch to a different blogging platform by using the ‘Restore’ feature.

4. Images & Videos

Images and videos backup is not currently supported, but the new service capabilities will be introduced soon.

There are three levels of support, and just the first one is free for all users. Levels and pricing:

Freemium

* Backup unlimited number of blogs
* Run backups daily
* 50 mb storage

Professional

* $4.17 per month ($49.95 per year)
* Restore your blog
* Backup images linked from blog
* 250MB of storage

Enterprise

* $8.30 per month ($99.95 per year)
* Restore your blogs
* Backup images linked from blog
* 1GB of storage

It is recommended to start from a free service, and if they fit your needs, you can eventually switch to more features-reach service level.

Developers Website: http://www.blogbackuponline.com/techrigy/

Free Blogging Communities on Danga Platform

After the publication, comparing Blogger and WordPost free blogging platforms ( http://blogging4good.blogspot.com/2008/02/blogger-vs-wordpress-review-for-newbie_07.html), I got several questions on the alternative solutions to start free blogs. In this post, I will briefly review blogging opportunities with communities, based on the Danga platform.

Danga Interactive was a Brad Fitzpatrick’s company that started in 1999 a famous community LiveJournal and developed a related operating software. In January 2005, blogging company Six Apart purchased Danga Interactive Company from Fitzpatrick, and in December 2007 sold it to SUP, a Russian media company that had been licensing the LiveJournal brand and software for use in Russia. The Life Journal in Russian is the most popular blogging community in the Russian-speaking countries at the moment. Overall, there are more than 14 millions of members using this platform, and more than 3 millions in USA. As a LiveJournal member, you can write blogs, add friends, start and join communities, and chat with other members. You can create custom layouts for your pages, as LiveJournal allows to paste in custom CSS files, changing overall blog layout. Another nice feature is ability to embed your journal into your own website. This blog service also accepts posts from email enabled mobile phones and from instant messaging services. You can upload video and images as well. With all the mentioned nice features, there are some not so nice disadvantages, as relatively high amount of advertising on the page and lack of the proper guidance from the new members.

The software running LiveJournal is open source and primarily written in Perl. Because of this, several other communities have been designed using the LiveJournal software. Among them:

§ DeadJournal - LiveJournal clone with very relaxed terms and usage conditions. Here you can find some journals that would not be hosted in any other communities.

§ GreatestJournal - community with about 2 million members, offering free voice posts, 1GB of photo hosting, and space for up to 2,000 user icons.

§ InsaneJournal - offers free accounts with heavy advertising, strongly encouraging its member to upgrade for paid accounts.

§ JorunalFen.net - Blogging host directed towards various fans communities restricting its membership for users 18 and older. A free account creation is turned off by default, however new users can still obtain a free blogging account.

§ Blurty - one more host for online journals and communities for people over 18. There are some limitations for a free accounts holders, like amount of characters in the journal name, or total amount of entries.