The future of lj?

[brightly_lit]

So ... how are people feeling about this whole lj-servers-moving-to-Russia thing? I saw on the home page a lot of people were afraid lj would abruptly shut down without warning. Just in case that does happen, I made a dreamwidth account--brightly_lit, same as here--where I'd love to hook up again with you ladies if you make the switch, as well.

I started with lj (under a different name) way back in its heyday in the early part of the millenium. I remember reading in the TOS that your posts and comments would be saved on lj's servers "forever," and I thought, "How cool, to have this thing for posterity when that's so rare. I wonder how they can promise that? But oh well, I guess they wouldn't say it if it wasn't true." Then they sold the company, again and again, and of course it ended up being just words, another tome created and ultimately perhaps lost to time, but if this is the end, it sure was great while it lasted. And I think dreamwidth has a lot of potential (even if for some reason it seems to lack much interaction between users).

I guess personally I think it seems unlikely they'll shut us down without warning, but it seems likely that lj might change a lot, maybe not for the better. Better to be safe than sorry in terms of coming up with a backup plan, in any case, is my opinion. Also, apparently it's quite easy to transfer your whole lj to dreamwidth if you're so inclined. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the whole business. I saw it discussed at length on the home page, but I don't think a single person on my friends page mentioned it, so it sounds like none of my friends here, at least are worried, so that's good.

Comments

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

... But this just isn't true?? Livejournal was invented by an American (Brad Fitzpatrick). It expanded into an American company called Danga Interactive, which was headquartered in Oregon (you can google it, and all of this). In 2005, another American company called Six Apart purchased lj. Here is the post Fitzpatrick made about it: http://news.livejournal.com/82926.html As he explains in the post, lj then moved to San Francisco.

In 2007, Six Apart sold lj to a Russian company, but it was still located in San Francisco and continued to operate there under the business name "Livejournal Inc." until 2009, when some of the business's aspects were moved to Russia, after which the story becomes a bit more murky. However, this user used pings to show many servers were still located in the US until this hubbub began a few days ago: https://mdlbear.dreamwidth.org/1584606.html.

You can read the whole story here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveJournal

Let's make sure we get our facts straight if we're going to get heated, eh?

[milly-gal.livejournal.com]

I actually was meant to be replying to something else hun. Not this comment, I was using my new phone and beggered up which link I clicked on in my inbox to reply to. Sorry.