As pointed out in this entry on no_lj_ads, the real numbers are more like 13 layoffs out of 30 employees. Still troubling, but not as dire.

Indeed, but, as you say, still troubling.

well they would try to sell it before shutting it down, and i am sure someone would by it so i am not yet worried

What do you think someone would "by" it for? (I.e., for what goal, not for what sum.)

Social networking seemed to be the big thing but I'm not sure how much money there really is to be made in running a site the size of LiveJournal.

Sigh! Here we go again -- every year after the permanent accounts sale some shit like this happens and gazillions of LJ users run amok in despair, discuss endlessly what alternatives could be used and how to export all their entries in the least painful fashion.... After SUP bought LJ, I actually let myself get infected by the general hysteria. I am not getting excited yet this time around. If LJ dies, I'll probably move over to Wordpress or Blogger. Until then I am not getting my panties in a twist.

Lol, knowing how rumours/news tend to spread and escalate into hilarious boycotts and panic on LJ... this could get interesting.

I sincerely hope that LJ won't disappear anytime soon, and I hope and think the article makes this sound more serious than it really is *stays optimistic till the end*

there is nothing permanent at internet

DO BACKUP OF YOUR BLOG NOW!!

LJ book is crashed at the moment for this very reason.

Well, nothing is "permanent" and selling "lifetime" accounts is almost always a bad idea. It's a way to get short-term cash but makes no financial sense whatsoever in the long run. Paying $100 or so for several years of paid membership is a good deal even if they at some point announce that the benefits won't continue, or offer new benefits to paid-subscription members that aren't available to permanent members.

If you like the service, then wake up to the fact that it costs money to run. If you don't want to pay for it, accept that it's not going to be around for very long.

But most of us do pay for LJ....and everyone on this forum has made a commitment to a perm acc. That is what is so disturbing about all this. My Space and Facebook are "free" and they are making it...LJ does have ads, but they also have revenue from all the paid accounts.

For some reason, I can't say I care very much.

I wouldn't be surprised, in this economy.

How much do I care? Well, I'll miss LiveJournal when it goes, but I'm not going to try to back up anything other than my photography.

In the meantime, I have a really sweet domain name lined up and am planning on creating my own blog with a simple script within the next year.

I will be sad but not heartbroken if LJ disappears forever. I really do like the community aspect. I already crosspost my entries to WordPress on my own domain.

How does Wordpress compare in terms of communities and friends pages?

Blame me. I bring bad karma.

But I'm questioning the credibility of all this. To me, that seemed like the perfect drama article.

Russia is having economic troubles like every nation. The first place to got to cut costs is payroll.

I'm not concerned. Even if the company currently running it goes under, it still has such a huge user base and well-established market and cultural presence, any number of other companies out there would be fighting to snap it up fast. Those things are extremely valuable to businesses; even more so when on a clearance sale. (:

Yeah...don't panic. I would imagine that the smaller LJ clones like GJ and IJ will flounder first, and LJ is likely to be bought out rather than disappear.

People panic like this all the time, but the site has weathered dozens of storms already. And ultimately, nothing is ever permanent - I knew that when I bought my perm account, there's always a risk that business will fail.

Not that I'm jumping on the panicky bandwagon but GJ already died a year ago. IJ had some financial difficulties and had to discontinue their permanent account option they used to offer all the time.

I don't know how many permanent accounts they sold, but I look at it this way - they just had a large infusion of capital to their company (the permanent account sale) and they had better be managing things responsibly.

Maybe this and the server move to Montana is to prep LJ for sale to someone else...

Good point on the Montana move. That was sure to be a decent investment amount. I wonder how big it needs to be?

The people cost is always more expensive in the end.

I seriously doubt we have anything to worry about.

I agree - I really don't see any reason for us to panic right now.

Btw, cute kitty icon!

I am going to remain hopelessly optimistic because $175 is a lot of money for me. I still consider it totally worth it, but if the site were to go down in the next year, I would cut myself.

I would also be pretty heartbroken 'cause my favorite fandom is miniscule and virtually unknown outside of LJ... :( It would disappear.

I think LJ will be okay. At least, I hope. I didn't buy this Permanent Account to have the site go down within the first year of having it.

I can't see lj disappearing entirely just yet, Sup need to try to get some cash back out of it.

There is a blog 2 blog transfer utility out there called Blog2Blog. (It was called Lj2blog or something similar.

It doesn't download your comments, but then, what does?

http://sf.net/projects/ljarchive does. Useful little thing. :)

I love the way people go into post mortems while the corpse is doing somersaults and playing hopscotch. How long has it been now since the demise of Air America Radio? Oh, wait, I was listening to it just a few minutes ago.

Here’s the deal as I see it: If LJ is doing a perm account sale, that means they want to raise cash quickly; they are willing to do without a lifetime of subscription fees to get a bundle of cash right way. I understood this when I bought my perm account two sales ago. (At the time there was the implication of building the company’s resources up, but not having the cash is not having the cash.)

I suppose moving to Montana is an attempt to reduce expenses, but maybe it’s just that the weather is a little more like that of Moscow. Hey, move LJ here to Minnesota! :)

I view investment in LJ in part as support for the idea of free software development; that gives the support a ‘moral’ aspect that I can fall back on even if I end up not getting my money’s worth.

Many, many companies are cutting back in this slagging economy, including my own employer. It's a shame that LJ is cutting back - but you gota do what you gota do... Often payroll is slashed to cut costs. Payroll costs $$$! Even moreso if whatever company covers any kind of benefits. (I have no idea if LJ offers benefits to its employees.)

I'd be very curious to see which positions are being eliminated. Technology? LJAbuse? Sales & Marketing? I guess we'll be able to tell, indirectly, once one thing or another winds up taking longer than average to get resolved.

For myself, I find the communities on LJ to be useful and/or entertaining from time to time. How do you back those up? Just like everything else? Can you do that?

I've had my permanent account for... geez, six years now? $100/$25 (annual fee for regular paid acct.) < 6. I've got my money's worth, by that metric. I've always known LJ could go under at any point. I had my own webjournal hosted by a friend in my own webspace, and THAT went down (*mumble mumble RAID is not a backup mumble*) within 2 years. LJ has been pretty reliable, by comparison. But if you really want security, get your own box and host your own site (or host with a friend but do your own backups). You're taking a risk any time you trust your content to someone else's servers.

As far as the site changing policy on honoring perm accts (rather than going under), well, we'll have to wait and see. If they want to call it livejournal but want me to pay for my account again, I'll probably walk.

Practice regular backups! I just d/l'ed ljArchive and will be trying it out shortly.

The only thing that really bothers me about this whole thing is what is on their Twitter. "LJers! Don't worry, the news of our demise is premature." Which sounds like the talk of their demise is too early but no necessarily off base. I am sure they don't know if these cuts will work out yet but that doesn't sound reassuring.

Yeah, I'm thinking (hoping) that "premature" was just a bad choice of words on their part, especially since they said "don't worry"..

That article seems to be based on some layoffs and has no other sources.

After Brad sold it to sixapart and sixapart selling it to Russian SUP, I really do not to trust any company. I know that Russia's economy is worse them mine (US)so that does not make me happy. I have a perm at IJ also that I use to back up my LJ. In fact I moved my journal here to IJ with LJ-Sec.

LJ-Sec is for changing the journal securities or for reposting (part or whole your choice) to another LJ type site like IJ or DJ.

http://www.mp3vcr.com/ljsec/

I also use ljarchive weekly for my community and LJs.

I started backing up more often after LJ deleting journals because of interests and I have not stopped.

I have a smallish F-List that I make sure they know how to find me in case something happens. Because it is a fact, one day it will. Instead of worry about that day, I just enjoy LJ now.

But for those who just bought an account, I would not worry. Just make plans in case and enjoy Livejournal :)

I found it interesting that LJ had an outage today, a day after their support team was laid off.

LiveJournal Status

LiveJournal may be unresponsive or slow to load due to some database problems we're experiencing. Our Operations staff is working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

11:20 pm GMT (Wednesday, January 7)