Don't panic

[cleolinda]

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.)

Comments

[raechel]

Just curious, should LJ someday go belly up, where will you go?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't know. I have a Facebook and a Twitter, plus my Cleoland wiki, so people will definitely be able to find me (this is the advantage of trying out every little new service: not putting your eggs in one basket). I'm trying to read up on other blogging services so I won't be completely out in the cold if the worst ever happens, but I really don't know of one that has everything I like about LJ.

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

What are your thoughts on InsaneJournal?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Not fond of it. It's kind of amateur-looking (or it was when I was last over there), and it's still having huge problems keeping up with GJ refugee traffic (or so I heard over the weekend). Wherever I go, I want it to be a large, stable service/business that isn't going anywhere.

[greenwitch.livejournal.com]

If LJ features are what you like, you could always follow rusty_halo's guide to migrating from LJ to Wordpress (http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2256) (by incorporating LJ-style plugins.) If you look at her self-hosted journal, it looks almost exactly like LJ, allowing for openID comments, user icons, moodthemes, LJ-cuts, etc.

I've incorporated a number of the plugin suggestions on my own Wordpress blog, and I *really* like it. Unfortunately I've had no luck with pushing my URL on friends who would rather not leave LJ, or I'd be over there myself. I stick to IJ as my main alternative.

But yeah -- if stable, reliable is the way you want to go -- can't beat self-hosting (as long as you find a reliable hosting company.)