Slashdot Log In
SixApart Sells LiveJournal to Russian Media Company
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:53 PM
from the new-boss-same-as-old-boss dept.
from the new-boss-same-as-old-boss dept.
molrak writes "SixApart tonight announced the sale of journal/blogging service Livejournal to Russia-based SUP. Original LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick has chimed in on the situation: 'This is pretty cool because - They're ridiculously excited about LiveJournal, and have been for awhile (they previous purchased advertising rights in Russia, but ended up doing a bunch of Russia-specific LJ development as well). They want to throw a lot of resources at LiveJournal in terms of product development and engineers. "LiveJournal.com, Inc." now stands alone again, focusing on nothing but LJ. Sounds like I'll have more LJ influence (via new role as advisory board member) than I've had recently.'"
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Im wondering... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Pure Coincidence or Kremlin Shenanigan? (Score:5, Interesting)
Golos and its supporters have been maintaining a blog page at LiveJournal [guardian.co.uk]. You can read either the actual blog page in Russian [livejournal.com] or the English translation of the blog page [google.com]. It contained plenty of damning evidence showing that the Kremlin had manipulated the election.
Then, after the election concluded, a Moscow-based company acquired LiveJournal. Is the timing merely coincidence or is the Kremlin somehow connected to this business deal?
Parent
Putinist Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Putinist Russia (Score:5, Informative)
As a longtime LJ user, I'm encouraged that Brad's still optimistic about SUP today, and I don't think Six Apart ever really knew exactly what to make of LJ, but I'm still having a hard time getting over a vaguely uneasy feeling about the whole thing.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nowadays, there ane two kinds of Russian businessmen: those with ties to Putin, and those that are out of business. Basically, they're back to the state running the economy.
Is there a single American business guy who is fundementally against George W. Bush and successful?
Don't give Soros example since it is clear that he is playing some "bad cop" game serving interests of USA and CIA with his "open society" (!) thing.
Is there a single high end business guy who will hang up the phone if president of USA calls? What would happen if he does?
I am not defending Putin, I am just saying it is how the entire planet in this economic/political system works.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The answers are "Probably Not" and "Probably Nothing."
But, more on point...
I detest President Bush, but I would still take a call from the President of the United States if he were to call me. I mean, you wouldn't? And why not? Like it or not (and, in my case, it's NOT), Bush is the President. And I'm a patriot. And I'm not going to turn down any reasonable request made by our Preside
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Putinist Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
The US may have sunk into becoming a harsh Big-Brother nation that is effectively ruled by two wings of a single party, but Russia is run by their local mafia.
In the US you still have lots of TV channels and papers and forums loudly critical of the reigning system, in Russia such voices are systematically silenced. In the US your government may be shamelessly lying to you about important matters like reasons for war and reasons for what they call anti-terror measures, but dissenting voices do get heard, even if they drown in the general noise. In Russia dissent is silenced for real.
In Russia it is too late. In the US it is not too late. Not yet. There's still time for you people to do something, should you wish to do something about it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Have you ever been to Russia? The most vocal politicians [usually right-wing] who get lots of attention in the media [local and otherwise] are the criminal kings who devastated the country during Yeltsin's reign. You've picked the wrong word: they're not being silenced, nobody just listens to them anymore.
Re:Putinist Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
I live there. It's cold.
Yes, there are problems with the limited Russian media. However, your definition of Russia as a harsh Big-brother nation run by the local mafia is overly simple and in most cases just flat out wrong.
The mafia don't run Russia any more. Russia is controlled and run by a few very rich corporations and individuals. The number of very rich corporations and individuals is growing on a daily basis.
Dissenting voices do get heard. The problem is that most Russians don't care to listen. Most Russians don't give a shit about politics.
Putin is doing wonders for the economy. Russia is one of the fastest developing countries on the planet, and will continue to grow that way for at least the next 5-10 years. The reason Russia is controlled by one party is because that one party is doing wonderful things for the average living standards of people across the country.
In another 4-8 years, Putin's power in the Russian government will have declined, and Russia will start to move towards a true, multi-party system as all those wealthy companies and individuals step in to fill the ex-Putin void. However, in the mean time there's no reason for Russia to change, and the vast majority of Russians will be much better off if the status quo is maintained for a couple years longer.
P.S. In Russia, Gary Kasparov is a joke. And 95% of what the New York Times writes about Russia is pure tripe.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'm far less optimistic than you, and deeply worried, but if you're right, this would certainly be wonderful.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a Putin fan because he's doing an incredible job of not wasting or misspending all those riches. The vast majority of Russia's petrodollars have gone into funding the federal budget and anything
Re: (Score:2)
Putinist Russia is more than scary, it is downright putrid smelling with state control. The Kremlin have essentially forced EU poll monitors out of Russia [guardian.co.uk]. There were far to few to begin with, and now there's no sign of them.
Though I am worried about the future state of Russia, I haven't given up hope on it just yet. There's still a large movement towar
Re:Putinist Russia (Score:5, Informative)
As a linguist studying minority languages of Russia, I do field work in places where the Putin-aligned local government has had no qualms sending goons to beat women and the elderly with pipes just for speaking or singing songs in the local indigenous language, and opposition figures still get sent to psychiatric hospitals whenever they dare to challenge the ruling party. When has that last happened in the US? Certainly there are some worrying developments in civil liberties, but people can breathe a lot more freely there than in Russia, which is truly one of the scariest places I've visited.
Parent
Re:Putinist Russia (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, if you loudly criticize the government you won't be heard because a finely-tuned media machine will just shout louder. In Russia, if you loudly criticize the government you won't be heard because you'll disappear.
In the US, the president belongs to an "old boys network" of guys who were in the same secret fraternity in their college days. In Russia, the president belongs to an "old boys network" of guys who were in the same secret police agency in the Soviet days.
In the US, journalists who uncover serious government misconduct get yelled at by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. In Russia, journalists who uncover serious government misconduct get injected with lethal doses of radioactive material.
Now. You were saying?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean that any anti-Putin blogging will be noted and passed on to the "proper" authorities?
Cold war is on again, now with Anti Putin junk.
There are other "proper" guys who will care about what you write there, I don't think CCCP (!) really cares about what Americans write about Putin or not.
If you are American you should be just careful about what you write about things happening in Iraq, Afghanistan since there are some guys who care about what you write about them living with your tax money.
I can't stand to this neo cold war junk on Slashdot, sorry if offended.
Re: (Score:2)
In any event I think there would be much greater cause for concern if they expressed an interest in moving the servers to Russia. That would all but guarantee something shady going on in the background... but then again, perhaps it would give the US bloggers a bit more [perceived, at least] freedom.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
The other 50% will be "in soviet russia" jokes, of course...
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Criticizing Russia's government and corruption isn't a racial attack, unless you're criticizing the fact that they're White.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Is there a "Russian race"?
If there is, that would be news to me. And I've been there a couple times. The races of those that live there aren't unique to Russia.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm trying to figure out how you'd devolve a discussion into "racial attacks" on a country like Russia on a web site where the vast majority of people are likely caucasian or European descent.
Or maybe you meant something else, like nationalis
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I predict that 50% of the comments here will be thinly-veiled racial attacks on Russia.
The other 50% will be "in soviet russia" jokes, of course...
Welcome back... Cold war.
I was at HK/China just a week ago, I bought IHT Newspaper. It took 2 pages to figure the cold war trickery stories of 1980s are back and threw it to paper recycling bin. The "South China Post" was lot more informative and insightful than the IHT junk.
(IHT:International Herald Tribune, NY Times pub.)
Editorial Controls? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Editorial Controls? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Paid Accounts (Score:2)
First it was China... (Score:2)
Re:First it was China... (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the weak dollar. Newly rich former adversaries are buying into our economy, both Germany and Japan did the same thing in the 80's. Might be a good thing for our (American) economy, might be (another) problem, however fresh capital is rarely a bad thing.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Filtering and Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
What will be interesting to see is whether the filtering and censorship of LJ will be more or less stringent than it was previously.
Earlier this year we had uproar due to fanfic heavy accounts being blocked and assorted accusations regarding slashfic being porn and potentially kiddie porn in the case of Harry Potter fic.
I wonder if moving out of the US juristriction for the 'publisher' will affect the degree in which copyright violations are pursued.
Prediction: no more censorship (Score:5, Informative)
If the behavior that SUP has found acceptable in its segment of lj is anything to go by, lj filtering and censorship may be set to disappear entirely.
Parent
Watch Out! (Score:2)
Big News! The Rest Of the World Has Money Now (Score:5, Informative)
From : http://www.econstats.com/weo/V012.htm [econstats.com]
Share of World Economy %
country 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
United States 21.68 21.34 21.13 20.97 20.85 20.71 20.57
Russia 2.36 2.42 2.46 2.55 2.60 2.66 2.69
Italy 3.22 3.20 3.12 3.01 2.91 2.84 2.79
France 3.34 3.33 3.27 3.17 3.10 3.04 2.98
Spain 1.81 1.82 1.81 1.78 1.75 1.72 1.70
China 10.92 11.47 12.07 12.68 13.18 13.59 13.99
India 5.45 5.54 5.65 5.83 5.91 6.05 6.17
I wish this chart went back further to really accentuate how much has changed over the past 15 years. The point being... Slowly but surely the world economy is getting more evenly distributed around the globe.
Re: (Score:2)
Death of an open source project (Score:2)
http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/tag/sup [livejournal.com]
This is basically going to mean that LJ, which was in a good position as an unincorporated open source project and a somewhat uncared for and misunderstood position under Six Apart, is being sold to a shoddy and inconsistent company an ocean away from half of its userbase. There is no guarantee that LiveJournal's new owners will take as good care of the seven years of information (ranging from useless to invaluable) its users h
So... (Score:2)
http://jwz.livejournal.com/ [livejournal.com]
Improved Customer Relations (Score:2)
Well it's not like the Russian mafia could be any worse at customer relations than Six Apart anyhow.
Very nice (Score:2)
Very nice, very nice.
How much ?
ZheZhe, Russian media rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Less than 20% of the Russian population is online, but outbreaks of support for otherwise ignored cases on LiveJournal have actually made it to mainstream prominence. Liberal groups (and others) have used it for organizing. All this was more than enough to set off the alarm bells of the Kremlin media masters. There have already been many cases of direct repression of bloggers and other web presences online (not just on ) using the broad extremism act. The Kremlin is wary of broader action because they don't want to make enemies of the active Russian internet community.
That's not the Putin model anyway, while what just happened to LiveJournal is exactly that. The annoying and/or potentially useful media entity is acquired by someone with tight Kremlin connections. Disloyal staff are replaced. Slowly or quickly, negative content about Putin and his administration disappears. Discussion is allowed as long as it doesn't cross the invisible line. The Putin regime has raised this to an art form, studying how the authoritarian governments of Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine were toppled (all with a similar blueprint) and taking preventative action. The internet wasn't really much of a factor in those cases but with the increased penetration these days the Kremlin isn't taking any chances. They won't care about blogs not in Russian. Intimidation and a chilling effect is the point. The best repression is the kind you don't have to back up.
Despite its overwhelming control, the Putin power structure is brittle and they have to figure out how to transition this power monopoly come the March 2, 2008 presidential elections. It's no coincidence that this move "against" LiveJournal comes now. It was a potential loose end that can now be bullied, or snipped off if necessary. Notices go out to all publishers/editors/reporters/users telling them they must comply with all laws, including the extremely vague act against extremism the regime uses to confiscate materials and harass critics across the country.
The internet in Russia is in a precarious state. If it were more widespread and more heavily used as alternative media it would attract the Kremlin attention it has largely escaped so far. Other than the DDOS attacks opposition sites are hit by on a regular basis. (A la the Estonian sites during their diplomatic row with Russia. Our Russian sites kasparov.ru and namarsh.ru get hammered regularly.)
The optimists and Putin apologists inside and outside of Russia have been proven wrong again and again. Of course he won't... and he does. He doesn't care how something looks to the West as long as it doesn't affect his bottom line and the grasp on power. They have a huge amount of money at stake, the only thing he and his gang really care about. LiveJournal is just another piece in the game.
Saludos, Mig Greengard
Editor, http://theotherrussia.org/ [theotherrussia.org]
Re:ZheZhe, Russian media rules (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:doesn't SUP = KGB? (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering a lot of Russian LJ users were on the site precisely because it was, if not completely out of Moscow's reach, at least more difficult to readily get at, I can understand why they'd be furious about that - and moreso about this.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)