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spicedogsA bit of LJ-related panic, via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shalimar77777 and divka
LiveJournal ... has cut about 20 of 28 employees — and offered them no severance (spotted vianicnac ). As veterans of the last dotcom crash know, websites have a nasty habit of disappearing overnight, leaving a deafening silence in the void.
UPDATE: Backup options available from LJ, LJBook and LJArchive.
shalimar77777 and divka LiveJournal ... has cut about 20 of 28 employees — and offered them no severance (spotted via
nicnac ). As veterans of the last dotcom crash know, websites have a nasty habit of disappearing overnight, leaving a deafening silence in the void. UPDATE: Backup options available from LJ, LJBook and LJArchive.
The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network
By Owen Thomas, 2:24 AM on Tue Jan 6 2009, 
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 quirky site, part blog and part social network, is best known for its users' weird obsessions — like the troublesome clique of Harry Potter erotica writers, whose outré tastes ran afoul of LiveJournal's efforts to comply with U.S. child-pornography laws. (Oddly, the site also gained a following in Russia, which led to its acquisition by Sup.) All that adds up to an environment even more distasteful to advertisers than the typical social site.
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 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.
Executives at Six Apart, the blog-software company which sold LiveJournal to Sup, are happily counting the money in its bank. And they should consider themselves lucky that Vox, the LiveJournal knockoff it started, hasn't been more popular. At this point, having a larger social network in the portfolio would be a drag on the company's value.
LiveJournal, founded by engineer Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999, predated most blogging services and social networks, and anticipated many of their features. (Some of Fitzpatrick's software is vital to the operation of Facebook and other large sites today.) But Fitzpatrick never figured out how to turn it into a business. Instead, he sold it to Six Apart, which didn't have much more luck.
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 quirky site, part blog and part social network, is best known for its users' weird obsessions — like the troublesome clique of Harry Potter erotica writers, whose outré tastes ran afoul of LiveJournal's efforts to comply with U.S. child-pornography laws. (Oddly, the site also gained a following in Russia, which led to its acquisition by Sup.) All that adds up to an environment even more distasteful to advertisers than the typical social site.
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 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.
Executives at Six Apart, the blog-software company which sold LiveJournal to Sup, are happily counting the money in its bank. And they should consider themselves lucky that Vox, the LiveJournal knockoff it started, hasn't been more popular. At this point, having a larger social network in the portfolio would be a drag on the company's value.
LiveJournal, founded by engineer Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999, predated most blogging services and social networks, and anticipated many of their features. (Some of Fitzpatrick's software is vital to the operation of Facebook and other large sites today.) But Fitzpatrick never figured out how to turn it into a business. Instead, he sold it to Six Apart, which didn't have much more luck.
The weakest in the herd are always the first to fall. Facebook and MySpace, so far, have resisted layoffs. A host of also-ran social networks — Hi5, MyYearbook, and other obscurities — could be next. It's only a matter of time before investors reach the same apparent conclusion as Paulson: that there's a lot of fuss in running a social network, but not that much money.
PASS THIS ON TO YOUR OWN LISTS, PEEPS.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 04:03 pm (UTC)I just finished backing up my LJs and Kat's to, while I was at it...fun.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 02:02 am (UTC)Also, Valleywag is pretty much a tech gossip blog.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 05:42 am (UTC)WOW, thanks for that Valleywag. I knew there was a reason I hated that rag. Not that I have anything against the HP shippers, but that's not all of us.
LJ's not going to go away without alerting us to its shutting down first. All the people who pay money for accounts are going to want their money back, and there'd be a lot of housecleaning to do before it collapses. The dotcom burst was a lesson, and I think most Web 2.0 sites have learned from that.