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Jan
06
2009
According to Gawker, LiveJournal has fired 20 12* of 28 employees.
If you haven’t backed up your LiveJournal articles, it might be time to do so.
*early reports were wildy exaggerated but it’s still a good idea to back up now.
Related Posts: Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. She's currently loving contemporary authors like Sarah Mayberry and Kristan Higgins but her first love will always be the historical. Some of her old time favorites are Amanda Quick and Johanna Lindsey and some of the new favorites are Sherry Thomas, Joanna Bourne and Claudia Dain.
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18 comments to “12 of 28 Employees Axed at LiveJournal: Start Backing Up Now”Say What's On Your mind |
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According to someone closer to the events than the Gawker, 13 employees are going and 17 are staying, so it’s not quite the slaughter reported. That said, though, keeping back-ups is always a good idea, and there are some tools that make it fast and easy. (At least for Windows — I don’t know about the Mac side.)
Angie
I’ve read the journals of some of the people laid off…oddly, they’re still using LJ themselves…and it does seem to be a hot mess.
Interestingly, they just had a drive in December to sell paid lifetime memberships- for $175 a pop. Bet the people who actually laid out the cash weren’t expecting that “lifetime” to translate into “a few months”.
Well, hell. Good thing I have mirror accounts on InsaneJournal.
Emmy, can you share any of the LJs you’ve been reading? I have a couple of communities I maintain there and would like to keep a close watch.
There’s a press release now:
http://livejournalinc.com/press_releases/20090106.php
It seems LJ product will now be maintained out of Moscow. I am extremely uncomfortable with that. It long been speculated that the owner, who is close friends with Putin, wishes to shut down the Russian dissidents because one of the last remaining forums for them is LJ. It’s known that the Russians had secretly placed monitors on Russian journals to track activity, secretly until they were caught that is. Now they can do whatever they want with the software. I feel sorry for the Russian members.
This is really interesting. And, also, very weird. I feel like I just walked into a 50’s spy novel. I’m definitely going to start looking at alternatives for my blogging.
I know. I didn’t believe it until I saw the code (programming code that is). But my Eastern Block friends and especially my Russian friends keep telling me you can never be too paranoid about the Russian government or mafia.
Now I keep imagining the head of SUP with a white Persian cat on his lap. ;D
This guy said his fiancee got fired with no notice whatsoever.
But it’s hard to pick through actual news vs the hysterical screaming of “ZOMG, this is my Only Social Interaction with the Universe!!1! If LJ goes Away, i shall has NO Friends!!!!”
Better to move away from LJ clones entirely. I’m ever so glad I set up my blog on my own site. Though I need to back up years of LJ entries – lot of memories there.
Wow. This whole thing is rather odd. It makes me happy that I rarely ever went to LiveJournal.
The link says 12 of 28, which is less frightening than 20 of 28. But it is still scary for people who use LJ a lot. I’ve passed the warning along to those I know in that category.
Yes, the “20 out of 28″ thing was pretty wack, and then correcting it without a disclaimer as they did made Gawker/Valleywag look like maroons.
@Julia Sullivan: I thought it said 20 out of 28 this morning.
Could someone provide a link or something to how to back up entries? My professional lj is mirrored on my site, but my old personal journal, which I kept throughout my second pregnancy and beyond… I’d really hate to lose that.
@14 Anion — I use ljArchive, which saves both posts and comments. Info and links are here. Particularly note Caveat 2, about how you have to have the .NET framework installed; do that first.
This is PC/Windows, BTW. I don’t have any info for Mac users.
Angie
This report says 12 employees represents about a fifth of the workforce, so it’s not as drastic as early reports indicated.
@Anion:
Are you a Mac or PC user? This is for Windows users:
http://brown-betty.livejournal.com/284083.html
Mac users can use Xjournal’s history feature to download their journal
http://community.livejournal.com/xjournal/
The most recent versions of ljarchive are now kept at sourceforge:
LJarchive
For Macs you can use Ljmigrate and tell it not to migrate so it just downloads a backup:
Ljmigrate
Early media reports seriously exaggerated the impact of the decision on the continued existence of LiveJournal as a company and misrepresented the scope of the staff cuts. The cuts were part of a restructuring that shifted global design and product development to the LiveJournal office in Moscow. Product decisions for the English-language site will still be made in the U.S., and LiveJournal Inc. remains headquartered in San Francisco.
Well that’s all right then [/sarcasm]