LiveJournal Growth And Stats Since 1999 [Infographic]

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LiveJournal Infographic

While most of our attention towards blogging these days is focused on the likes of WordPress, Tumbler and even Posterous Spaces, the original community-based social network LiveJournal continues to chug along, drawing in millions of pageviews while promoting community and creativity.

LiveJournal has now created an infographic (shown below) that showcases how far the site has come since being founded in 1999.

LiveJournal now boasts 92 million visitors worldwide who operate 46 million journals and operate communities that span the globe.

Not only has the community become a large platform for individual users it has also created various one-stop shops for news aggregation such as AramaTheyDidn’t and celebrity blog ONTD.

LiveJournal most recently launched LJ Media, a social media plublishing group that hopes to turn popular communities into thriving media websites. [Read more…]

LiveJournal Saving Lives Down Under

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Not content at watching disaster happen while doing nothing, it looks like the LiveJournal community has decided to help those in need in Australia who have been struggling to survive in the wake of the natural disaster affecting the region.

In response to your requests, we’re pleased to offer a charitable vgift to aid flood relief efforts in Australia. We hope you’ll show your support by sending this vgift to friends. One hundred percent of proceeds will be donated to the Australian Red Cross (we’ll cover the processing fees). We thank you for helping us make a difference. (LiveJournal News)

[Read more…]

LiveJournal Challenges WordPress On iPad

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After reigning supreme as the only blog platform with an official iPad app, it looks like WordPress is finally being challenged upon Steve Jobs “magical” device.

LiveJournal has announced that it has relaunched their iPhone app as a universal app, which means LJ fans can finally blog on their iPads without having to super size the iOS application.

The new version of the LiveJournal iPhone/iPad app supports a full-screen display for the iPad. We’ve also made numerous improvements on the LiveJournal iPhone app.

Here are some of the key enhancements:

Adapted for the iPad (full screen interface)
Ability to view in horizontal mode
Adapted for the iPhone 4
Improved Filter Friends page
View links to other sites with the built-in browser
Spell-check and auto-correct for posts, comments, and messages
Text formatting improvements, including bold, italics, underline, and strikeout
Improved mapping of content
Improved performance and content rendering
Improved application stability with multiple bug fixes (LiveJournal Mobile)

Despite their late entrance upon both the iPhone and iPad, LiveJournal has done a phenomenal job in designing their iOS app to be not only extremely user friendly, but also to allow users to easily create lengthly content while on the go.

The only disadvantage the LiveJournal app has when compared against its WordPress rival is the the former lacks video uploading (a feature WordPress embraced in September).

While it’s good to see LiveJournal finally embracing the iPad, there is no word on whether they will embrace other platforms (like Android and Blackberry), which they will need to do if they want to challenge WordPress’s mobile domination in the future.

LiveJournal Resurrects iPhone App

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After remaining in a dormant state for almost a year in a half, the LiveJournal team has resurrected the iPhone app previously created by CosySoftware and have adopted it as their own.

We’re pleased to announce that the new LiveJournal iPhone app is available for free in the Apple store! Be sure to download the application labeled “LiveJournal Inc.” (Official LiveJournal News)

As far as creating content goes, the LiveJournal app is the most advanced mobile blogging app in the app store, one that rivals (if not exceeds) WordPress and Squarespace, as well as a host of third party apps. [Read more…]

LiveJournal Joins WordPress, Copies Tumblr

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It looks like “Tumblr envy” is spreading throughout the blogosphere as LiveJournal has joined WordPress (not to mention Typepad as well) in copying a feature that has set apart Tumblr from the rest of its rivals.

You can add a repost button that allows other users to share all or part of your entries on LiveJournal. Please note that you must disable auto-formatting to insert a repost button. This button is only intended for public entries (i.e., if your entry is marked friends-only and you add the repost button, the entry can be reposted publicly by others, although the original post will remain friends-only).  (Official LiveJournal Blog) [Read more…]

LiveJournal allows Google AdSense on premium accounts

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livejournalI’ll admit that I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to blogging platforms, and my view of LiveJournal isn’t the rosiest. Then again, the platform does have 22 million registered bloggers, so it’s certainly not to be passed over.

The Russian-owned blogging platform will now allow its premium (i.e. paid) users to embed Google AdSense ads on their blogs.

The “Your Journal – Your Money” system means that LJ users with an AdSense account can add customised ads to their blog, in much the same way as any other AdSense publisher would. LiveJournal says it won’t take any of the profits (and if it’s based on individual AdSense accounts, how could it?) [Read more…]

Twitter Still Struggling For Some

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The Twitter denial of service attack is still keeping some users from posting tweets, although most of the people I’ve spoken to seem to have no issues. The official blog has some more information on the subject, and the Status Blog is of course a bit more technical. So in other words, don’t freak out if you can’t send your breakfast tweets or whatever, it’s just some nasty person trying to bring Twitter down.

More: LiveJournal and Facebook also affected.

LiveJournal Restructuring: Not As Bad As Reported?

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LiveJournal finally published a press release regarding the restructuring of the company, which is fancy words for cutting parts of the workforce. Previous reports might or might not be a bit extreme, it is really hard to tell because the press release really doesn’t tell us much.

LiveJournal Inc.’s headquarters, technical operations (and servers,) legal, administration, and customer service teams will remain in the United States. LiveJournal’s global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office. The pooling of resources between the U.S. and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal.

As a result of these changes, Matthew Berardo, VP and General Manager of LiveJournal Inc., will be leaving the company along with other valued colleagues. Mr. Berardo played the leading role in consolidating product and design efforts to enable the business to more effectively streamline costs during his tenure. LiveJournal Inc. will now be led jointly by Stephanie Gravelle, currently LiveJournal Inc.’s director of finance and administration, and Sergei Komarov, currently CTO of SUP (LiveJournal Inc.’s holding company).

A press representative told me that “LJ laid off about a dozen employees, which is less than 20% of the entire LJ workforce”, a bit less than the previous report of 20 sacked employees posted by Valleywag. On the other hand, the PR rep talked about the entire workforce, which might mean something.

One thing is for sure, and that is that LiveJournal is in trouble. I personally find it unlikely to see this one go belly up, someone will pick it up before that happens, but you might want to hold on to your premium account dollars, at least for now.

LiveJournal Cuts Workforce, Doomed?

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Bad news for 20 employees at LiveJournal, they just got sacked, leaving only 8 left to run the now Russian social network. Vallyewag broke the story, and found this LiveJournal blog that tells of no severance package and a total lack of advance warnings. Ouch. I bet Six Apart is happy it sold the service to SUP in time.

Hopefully the LiveJournal service will not suffer too much because of this, but if I were a user I’d start getting backups. I doubt LiveJournal will go all JournalSpace on us, but still, you never know.