Livejournal matters

[winter]

However I may personally feel about the LiveJournal staff layoffs, there's an official statement about them now.

Most of LiveJournal revenue is in rubles. Their labour costs were in USD. Economically, it's a textbook move, especially since they already have a Russian technical and product development team - who are paid less.

Best of luck to everyone involved, especially those who got the bad news :(

Comments

[winter]

It's amusing watching these attitudes versus some other portions of the internet. It seems to have divided itself into social networks (which are commercial, ad-laden, and all this is expected) and blogs (which are ad-supported so that plucky writers can make a living). LJ's the only big place I know where people are still offended by ads.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

It's a mystery. Perhaps there's a heavy element of web nostalgia here, echoed in that old-established rallying cry of the ten-year vets: "Brad Fitzpatrick said no ads!"

[winter]

I wouldn't put it past them. While LJ's not a walled garden the way Facebook is, it's incredibly self-sufficient with the way it functions as an RSS aggregator. For a lot of people, LJ is the internet.