Recently, the popular social blog service Livejournal was sold, transferring ownership from Six Apart (who also own Typepad, Movable Type, and Vox) to the Russian company SUP. What does this mean for Livejournal users and for social websites in general?<\/p>\n
Livejournal is the most popular blogging platform in Russia, where the Russian for Livejournal, Zhe Zhe, is synonymous with the blogosphere. Does Russian ownership of Livejournal endanger the speech of Russian activists using LJ to express politically dangerous ideas? LJ’s many subcommunities of longtime users have widely varying opinions on the sale and other recent changes.<\/p>\n
Erica (a Livejournal users for nearly 6 years) will lead discussion. Here are some background links:<\/p>\n
InformationWeek: Is LiveJournal Deal Part Of Putin’s Putsch?<\/a> (thanks Ron for the link!) Also: * * * Brett, Erica, and j are working on lining up some great speakers and topics in the coming weeks. Please stay tuned! As always, if you have suggestions or people you can arrange to bring in, please do!<\/p>\n Upcoming events of interest:<\/p>\n Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:<\/p>\n Recently, the popular social blog service Livejournal was sold, transferring ownership from Six Apart (who also own Typepad, Movable Type, and Vox) to the Russian company SUP. What does this mean for Livejournal users and for social websites in general? Livejournal is the most popular blogging platform in Russia, where the Russian for Livejournal, Zhe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meetings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/bloggroup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWired article from 2006<\/a> (when SUP began collaborating with LJ) on Russian users’ concerns
\nAnalysis from a former LJ volunteer<\/a><\/p>\n
\nPress releases<\/a> from Six Apart and SUP
\nOfficial “LJ 2008” community<\/a> for SUP to update LJ users on the transition
\nZDNet: Six Apart “jettisoned” Livejournal<\/a>
\n“Sold down the Volga”<\/a> and followup post<\/a> by longtime LJ user daweaver (thanks Chris for the link!)
\nArchive.org: Livejournal’s “Social Contract”<\/a> from its pre-sale-to-Six-apart days
\nEFF’s deeplinks post <\/a>
\ndanah boyd’s post<\/a>
\nan LJ user goes to the SUP buyout party<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBerkman will be closed on Dec. 27<\/strong>. We will not have a formal meeting then. We should be resuming normal meetings on January 3.<\/p>\n\n
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