Don't panic

Obviously I'm behind from my internet being out last night, but I just have to jump in with this (via my friend David):

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 about 20 of 28 employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.

... The company's product managers and engineers were laid off, 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, is also believed to be gone.

... 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.

I don't think this is the end of the world per se; pulling the plug entirely would just lose them more money. Sure, LJ's "on life support," but it's still here, and you never know what might happen. This could be a weird blessing in disguise, if a company that had no clue what to do with LJ ends up dumping it on someone who does know. (Hint: "We're gonna be the next MySpace!" is not the way to run it.)

That said, it's time once again to look into archiving your journal (try LJBook or LJArchive, the one I use). You know... just to be safe.

ETA: Only 13 employees laid off? (Thanks, jdotmi.)

Sleepy, a little scattered

Re: LiveJournal: Here's the press release about the layoffs.

Back at the ranch, as it were, I got so sucked into this afternoon's rerun of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit when Sister Girl was over doing laundry this afternoon--it was one of those L&O specialties where they started off with one crime and midway through switched to another that they discovered in the course of investigating the first one, which was great and fantastic and all except that I kept screaming "BUT WHAT ABOUT BRIANNA????"

... maybe you had to be there.

Meanwhile, yesterday, I ran around doing housework (you know it's bad when I try to procrastinate by cleaning) until I ended up throwing up all over the bathroom. (Which then, of course, had to be... cleaned.) I have no idea what that was about, except that I'd had a heavy breakfast (well, you know: greasy fast-food biscuit) on a nervous stomach. And then I felt feverish and had chills all day (and a good bit of today as well), so maybe I'm legitimately sick, who knows.

I made Sister Girl take the rest of the Mountain Dews with her, though, so that temptation is at least removed. Also, I think the withdrawal headaches have eased up.

I'm also trying to remind myself that I may be in a hypomanic phase (what with the running around cleaning), so if I suddenly crash and don't feel magically energetic anymore, that's not a moral failing. It just means that if I feel good now, I need to make hay while the sun shines.

Apropos of nothing much, one more thing about Prince Caspian: ( Read more... )

Oh, by the way, I got an email newsletter/casting call from Universal Pictures, and when I tried to copypaste the info to pass it along, it turned out to be a series of image files. Huh. Therefore, I will present it to you as it was presented to me (click to enlarge): ( ARE YOU THE NEXT MCLOVIN????? )

Of course, I saw the name "Edward" and ran screaming, but there you are. (Oh, and the MySpace and Facebook links were clickable; at least you don't have to type those in. The latter demands to know whether you are THE NEXT MCLOVIN' OR MICHAEL CERA?!, which should give you an idea of what they're looking for.)

Speaking of Edward, mistress_gwen has started the comm sparklpires for lolfans. Enjoy.

( Catchup linkspam! )