SixApart Sells LiveJournal to Russian Media Company 172
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.'"
Its all Russian anyways (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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.
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ZheZhe, Russian media rules (Score:1, Informative)
The Other Russia is a social group broadly aligned against Putin. This places them on board with people like Novodvorskaya, who is so rabidly anti-Russian (and thereby anti-Putin) as to practically be a maniac, and Politkovskaya, who was essentially an apologist for Chechen terrorists.
It also frequently engages in spin and disinformation.
Two examples from the above rhetoric:
1) "authoritarian governments of Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine". Yes, those evil authoritarian governments were toppled, and were replaced by responsive, representative democratic governments we have today....like say, those of Saakashvilli - who is a little demented creep with Napoleonic ambitions who has driven the Georgian economy into the sewer and engages in repression of dissenting voices with an ardor of a pitbull on PCP. And this is not even the 'gentle repression' we have with Putin. This is the hardcore, 'jackboots in broad daylight' kind of deal. Or, for that matter, the government of Ukraine, headed by Yushenko and Yulia Timoshenko. Timoshenko herself appears to be channeling Rockefeller, with her unbounded "captains-of-industry" greed which she's been able to promote thanks to her political ties. Let's not get started on Yushenko who is essentially a bumbling pawn for his American string pullers.
Which brings us to the important point: those "authoritarian governments" were "toppled" by the same model - that our friend is correct about - what he disingenuously fails to state is that they were carefully engineering by American influences, with American money and American advisers. Effectively, what you are saying is that Putin is at fault for learning from the past and desiring to prevent an American-based revolution. How evil of him.
2) "...he doesn't care how something looks to the West" Oh I'm sorry, he doesn't? Oh say it ain't so! This wouldn't resemble a certain Western democracy that unilaterally invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses, all the while ignoring the UN, the world, and its own people saying 'There are no WMDs in Iraq'. Surely not. No, Russia is the only evil nation to "ignore" the rest of the World's opinions. Give me break.
I do not fundamentally understand why you, as a Russian citizen have so much sympathy for the US. If you like it so much, move there. But stop applying double standards to Putin. Yes he has done bad things, yes his people have been repressive, and for all I know he may in fact be evil - though I hope what we've seen is overzealous assistants. But you're acting like a brainless cheerleader for the West, and that's why you have the image of a hack writer and shill. You want to criticize the regime - good for you. Just do it honestly.