livejournal sells out and lj servers go dark

[karyn]

this is the message you get when trying to access livejournal now. i hate that site and rarely look at it so it probably means something that this happened when i was looking over there. i just wanted to read lj's press release about them selling out their whole company to some other corporate journal software company.

"Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power, for some unknown reason. (unknown to me, at least) We're currently dealing with bringing our 100+ servers back online. Not fun. We're not happy about this. Sorry... :-/ More details later.
Update #1, 7:35 pm PST: we're up on 'dirty' power for now (it works, but it's unreliable), and we're working to assess the state of the databases. The worst thing we could do right now is rush the site up in an unreliable state. We're checking all the hardware and data, making sure everything's consistent. Where it's not, we'll be restoring from recent backups and replaying all the changes since that time, to get to the current point in time, but in good shape. We'll be providing more technical details later, for those curious, on the power failure (when we learn more), the database details, and the recovery process. For now, please be patient. We'll be working all weekend on this if we have to."

[suicidal_tendencies]

god that fucking sucks. i need to post today. ahhhh

[One Eyed Cat]

Wow. Kudos on the timely post. I have a photo montage and sequence of events in Ukraine on live journal. I had assumed their servers to be reliable. I just tried to log in and got a cryptic message concerning their servers. Will be pissed if they lose anything. My backups are unsorted. MovableType is a superior interface, but this is bullshit.

OEC

[karyn]

what's MovableType?

[Muzz]

Yah, I was going to post about my great day with Master today. Bleh...

[One Eyed Cat]

http://www.movabletype.org

It's a blog interface put out by the company that bought LJ. It has a lot more options and features than the LJ interface.

OEC

[karyn]

so if they took livejournal down now that they bought it does that mean they are replacing it with more complicated software? i would think that would piss people off but everything pisses me off and i hate lj anyway.

[One Eyed Cat]

so if they took livejournal down now that they bought it does that mean they are replacing it with more complicated software? i would think that would piss people off but everything pisses me off and i hate lj anyway.

They say they are simply incorporating the MT interface into LJ. This is why I am a bit concerned. It is ominous for the servers to go down while they are upgrading. LJ sucks anyways, but I found a use for it over the last couple months. Would suck to lose the order of my pages + some of my comments.

OEC

[Tequila Zaire]

Dammit! Where else am I gonna get my fix for people bitching and telling me about how they fucked their best friends new love interest or thirty year olds caught up in teen melodrama they call their lives!?!!??!

I admit I had one...still kinda do...but I've only seen 6 people put them to good use.

[jbk]

yeah i just saw that when i went to update my page there.... grrrrrr

[killerkat]

sorry to sound stuipid but what the hell is a blog?.........

[One Eyed Cat]

(n.) Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.



(v.) To author a Web log.
Other forms: Blogger (a person who blogs).

Blog software create interfaces that make it easy to post articles, images, etc on sort of a journal type website. A lot are used as some sort of public diary, some are on world events or other subjects. I used mine to chronicle events overseas. Usually, lj is just a forum of personal thoughts (and often some really lame shit) There are a few good ones too.

OEC

[Amelia G]

WTF? Didn't they just say like a day ago that nothing was going to change?

Blog is short for web log and is generally used interchangebly with any online compilation of entries in a diary format whether or not the subject matter is personal. There are different connotations for different terminology, but that is pretty much the basics.

Thinking about it, though, isn't there some crazy power screw up at one of the major hosting companies tonight?

[One Eyed Cat]

WTF? Didn't they just say like a day ago that nothing was going to change?

Blog is short for web log and is generally used interchangebly with any online compilation of entries in a diary format whether or not the subject matter is personal. There are different connotations for different terminology, but that is pretty much the basics.

Thinking about it, though, isn't there some crazy power screw up at one of the major hosting companies tonight?

I loved the message on the site. "We sold out and moved to SF nyaah nyaah" I haven't heard of any power shortage, but you may well be right. I doubt they'll actually lose the sites themselves.

OEC

[incog]

Dammit! Where else am I gonna get my fix for people bitching and telling me about how they fucked their best friends new love interest or thirty year olds caught up in teen melodrama they call their lives!?!!??!

I admit I had one...still kinda do...but I've only seen 6 people put them to good use.

You took the words right out of my mouth, except for the ever having one part. Livejournal and its ilk just give voices to horrid petty people who are dying to show you why no one gave them a voice in the past.

[Nudemuse]

The Internap thing going down was pretty huge. I spoke to a couple of people at other telcoms while I was at work who had no net access and some fucked co located equipment.

As for lj and it's ilk I have several online journals for various things. Lj is probably my least favorite of them but it serves my purpose. And I've learned not to click on random journals anywhere. It can make your eyes bleed.

Which reminds me I need to get to work on my main layout. Weeee

[SindelChaos]

Yeah, I just went there before coming here to see what friends' journals I missed since crashing and they say it's down. It's not really a big deal to me because I don't live on my LJ. I write everything I really want to remember in a personal diary.

[Nightingale]

I haven't posted anything there since they announced the sale, but not for that reason. Just not enough hours in the day; and I had promised myself a journal entry every day back then when the new year started ...

[One Eyed Cat]

LJ up! 8:24 P.M. EST. My site is intact.

OEC

[TheQuietPlace]

I really do NOT think they sold out. I believe that they sold the company out of lack of resources. Lets put you in LJ's shoes before they sold the company. What would you do?

[Amelia G]

I really do NOT think they sold out. I believe that they sold the company out of lack of resources. Lets put you in LJ's shoes before they sold the company. What would you do?

With Blue Blood in print, we had many opportunities to sell the brand or sell the brand out and I always turned them down. Even when the only thing in my refridgerator was film.

I am sick to death of people who do something online, when online projects are so much cheaper than offline ones, and they spout all these ideals and then they sell those ideals out the second someone waves a shiny quarter in their face. I think most of them intend to sell out from day one or are corporate tools from day one and just tell people idealistic mission statements as a marketing device.

Not saying that is necessarily the case with livejournal. Just speaking my mind on the general concept. You never have to sell out. You always have a choice.

[Nightingale]

As I understand it, the thing is more of a merger of interests. Both companies have things the other does not, and the expansion means more services on both sides. Plus no one is losing their job and the systems should remain intact with only more enhancements. I cannot see LJ (Danga) really selling out when they have been putting so much into the system over the last few months and are more involved with the project than a CEO would be with a company where he's only elected to the position for a short period.

[One Eyed Cat]

With Blue Blood in print, we had many opportunities to sell the brand or sell the brand out and I always turned them down. Even when the only think in my refridgerator was film.

I am sick to death of people who do something online, when online projects are so much cheaper than offline ones, and they spout all these ideals and then they sell those ideals out the second someone waves a shiny quarter in their face. I think most of them intend to sell out from day one or are corporate tools from day one and just tell people idealistic mission statements as a marketing device.

Not saying that is necessarily the case with livejournal. Just speaking my mind on the general concept. You never have to sell out. You always have a choice.

That message at lj said *sell out* all over it, imo. You have to unload and buy sites sometimes. I don't think it is selling out unless it's corporate and for $$$.

OEC

[sheramil]

yeah, well, sod them. only thing i had on there was about twelve parts of a story that i'd been toying with. it was boring, it was going nowhere and besides, no-one gave a toss.

the story, that is.

current listen: Primus, Pudding Time
current read: hopefully, tomorrow, it'll be The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg

[Tequila Zaire]

How can a site that's 99% self whoring sell out exactly?

[Amelia G]

How can a site that's 99% self whoring sell out exactly?

I don't feel I know enough about the LJ deal to say whether it specifically counts as selling out, but they did have a lot of anti-commercial rhetoric about what they permitted and not having banners etc. I think that, if their deal is a primarily commercially-oriented one, especially if it is one which turns out to change the character of the site, then it seems fair to characterize the deal as selling out whether or not you felt the site had any merit beforehand.

Even if someone has sucky values, if they are willing to ignore their own professed values for money, then they are selling out. Of course, if the original values are rotten enough, I guess selling out could be a plus for some projects.

I always felt their site would have been better if they either had guidelines for commercial activity or straight up banned it across the board. Instead they made it semi against the rules and enforced it pretty randomly and then made it so people could set up unlimited spammer accounts.

[Tequila Zaire]

What I never liked about is was the fact it never had an identity. It was either women in their thirties trying to act like they are 18 again (sorry but posting your wild sex life then talking about your 12 year old kid is fucking creepy) or really ugly guys hanging around with these MILDLY attractive women thinking they are pimps cause they can get the women to post shots of their boobs on their journals.

Then you have the whole idiot teenagers thinking they are in their twenties and only prove school shootings may be a good thing in the long run.

Add to this is the "Buy crap from my website" links.

It's still my favourite reality show though. I know a few journals that are pretty good and it's what keeps me going to the site but the original intention of anonymous people and what not...that's a dying fad. You knew it was gonna die when people started to say shit like this...

"This Journal Is Friends Only...Leave A Post and Maybe I'll Add You" or my favourite "This Journal Is Friends Only cause I don't want people I work with to see it"....It's a public journal people...that's the point.

They need to die though, at least the "news" ones cause you have people posting news that has no real fact checking behind it. It's jsut a series of links to whoever posted it or posted it before the person who posted it posted it.

It's madness of free press by way of Alice in Wonderland.

[chaosfeary]

Doesn't seem to be in so bad a situation from what they've written at http://www.livejournal.com/news.bml and the pages all seem to be up again.

I thought everything was going to be deleted at first but it's all the same as before.

[Amelia G]

Doesn't seem to be in so bad a situation from what they've written at http://www.livejournal.com/news.bml and the pages all seem to be up again.

I thought everything was going to be deleted at first but it's all the same as before.

It is a plus that the site is not just gone, although I didn't think it would be, but that all reads like a pretty typical corporate press release designed to assure the readers that the company being acquired is not selling out. Unfortunately, the whole internet mode for doing business makes it harder and harder to tell who is sincerely doing what they feel will best promote the values they started out with and who is just making a buck and laughing behind everyone's backs about people believing they believe in anything at all.

[One Eyed Cat]

It is a plus that the site is not just gone, although I didn't think it would be, but that all reads like a pretty typical corporate press release designed to assure the readers that the company being acquired is not selling out. Unfortunately, the whole internet mode for doing business makes it harder and harder to tell who is sincerely doing what they feel will best promote the values they started out with and who is just making a buck and laughing behind everyone's backs about people believing they believe in anything at all.

They've definitely gone corporate. That company is buying up blog companies right and left.
They own stuff like http://www.typepad.com and have incorporated several blog interfaces into their fold. LJ was silly anyways, but still.

OEC

[Nightingale]

I don't think that the sale or merger of itself is something to be concerned about, but there are bigger fish out there and this fascinating article might raise a few hackles on the backs of necks ...

[One Eyed Cat]

I don't think that the sale or merger of itself is something to be concerned about, but there are bigger fish out there and this fascinating article might raise a few hackles on the backs of necks ...

Yahoo blog. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

OEC

[TheQuietPlace]

I don't think that the sale or merger of itself is something to be concerned about, but there are bigger fish out there and this fascinating article might raise a few hackles on the backs of necks ...

Wow that's one damn fascinating article (no sarcasm intended). That article made a lot of sense about why Yahoo! would/should buy Six Apart.

Would LJ/MT/TP users be screwed if Yahoo! bought Six Apart? My opinion is yes, they'd all be screwed.

[Nightingale]

Would LJ/MT/TP users be screwed if Yahoo! bought Six Apart? My opinion is yes, they'd all be screwed.

I don't think it would be a Good Thing if yahoo! bought out Six Apart, especially not for LJ. You only need to look at what happened to onelist which was bought out by eGroups, which was bought out by yahoo! a few years ago. Packed with advertising and paid-for spam and with a selection of groups remaining which reflects nothing on the excellence that was onelist right at the start.

Were I yahoo!, I'd have taken eGroups as my special interest groups listing and kept onelist as a form of blog, holding the two entities separate. Sadly they haven't done that, and clicking onto either onelist or eGroups brings you straight to yahoo!groups.

[Morning Glory]

um.. remember when there was a million free online journals? oh wait, that was today. who cares if LJ shuts down? or even if they all do? there'll be ten more that pop up tommorrow where you can do the same exact thing and if you're worried that the loss of a website will make you lose all your freinds...you really need to get out more.

[Nightingale]

There used to be a million fre online groups or group services such as eGroups and onelist, and where are they all now? The big movers like topica and yahoo! took them over and destroyed them. From that point of view it would not be a Good Thing is LJ vanished or if it was consumed by another big player; it could herald the end of the freedom we now enjoy to pick and choose.

[Morning Glory]

I don't think that's the case. look at napster and itunes, has that stopped people from being able to download free songs? nope.( note the failure of thier initial attempts to stop it period, and then after not being able to, they thought they could take control of the market by buying up the major sites and charging members to use them.) I see online journals going this same way.

[One Eyed Cat]

There are still a bunch of free blogger sites. They just haven't "caught on" as lj did. MT is actually a great interface, am using it for my new site. It just bodes ill once yahoo starts buying up the popular free sites.

OEC

[Nightingale]

I don't think that's the case. look at napster and itunes, has that stopped people from being able to download free songs? nope.( note the failure of thier initial attempts to stop it period, and then after not being able to, they thought they could take control of the market by buying up the major sites and charging members to use them.) I see online journals going this same way.

I'm not suggesting that people will be unable to continue with free blogging services - the discussion groups are still there, after all - however, the selection will become considerably less and far more commercial, especially if yahoo! gets its fingers into the pie.

[Morning Glory]

yeah, it's a sad fact of life. welcome to capitalism. there's always good old fashion human interaction between two people face to face if you don't wanna pay the piper, as of yet the corporations don't own the rights to that one. give it another ten years.