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LiveJournal

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LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ or lj) is the name of a website where Internet users can keep a journal or diary, as well as the name of the server software that was designed to run it. It is one of many sites that come under the term blog, or weblog.

A number of features distinguish LiveJournal from other blog sites, one of which is the "Friends Page," a list of the most recent posts from people a user has added to their "Friends List" — turning LiveJournal into a community of interconnected weblogs, and shifting it toward being social network software. Another such distinguishing feature is the employment of the S2 template system to allow users to customise the appearance and behaviour of their weblogs.

Similar to other online services, users may upload a small graphical icon, referred to as user picture or userpic by LiveJournal users, by which to define one's self to the rest of the community (this user picture functions as the user's avatar). This optional small image may take a maximum viewing size of 100 by 100 pixels. LiveJournal's free users, which account for approximately 94% of the network, may have a limit of 3 interchangeable ones. Paid account holders may have many more (over a dozen), and can pay optional fees for additional user picture slots.

One's icon, if present, will appear next to one's username when others view one's post on their friend's page, as well as on one's main LiveJournal site at a specific location dependent upon the layout.

The software running the site is open source and primarily written in Perl. It is also used by several other sites.

History

LiveJournal was started in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a way of keeping his high school friends updated on his activities. Fitzpatrick owns Danga Interactive, the company that owns and operates LiveJournal.

Certain LiveJournals have become famous throughout the years for their especially interesting content, including political commentary and anecdotal advice on subjects ranging from household care to aquariums. The most famous is arguably that of Rachelle Waterman, known on LiveJournal as smchyrocky, who was arrested on November 19, 2004 for the murder of her mother. Her journal became a source of much discussion among the Internet community and the media, especially her final entry mentioning her mother's death.

Invite codes

From September 2, 2001 until December 12, 2003, the growth of LiveJournal was put under control by an "invite code" system. This was because the number of users was increasing faster than the server architecture could handle. New users needed to either obtain an invite code from an existing user, or buy a paid account (which reverts to a free account at the expiration of the period of time paid for). The invite code system also had the side effect of helping prevent abuse, by deterring people from creating many throw-away accounts. The invite code system was lifted after a number of major improvements to the overall site architecture.

The removal of the invite code system was met with mixed feelings and a surprisingly large amount of opposition. A number of users felt that the invite code system gave LiveJournal a touch of elitism, or a closed-community feel. Others, including LiveJournal's management, pointed out that when first introduced, the invite code system was intended to be temporary.

Controversy

As LiveJournal has grown it has also had to deal with issues of the content it hosts. It adopted a basic Terms of Service similar to most web logging hosts. The Terms of Service simultaneously expresses a desire for free speech by the users while outlining impermissible conduct such as spamming, copyright violation, harrassment, etc. From its support group LiveJournal created an Abuse team and processes to handle claims about violations of the Terms of Service, violations of copyright, violations of the law, and other issues.

The Abuse team at LiveJournal has frequently come under criticism for handling of alleged violations. Many users felt the Abuse team over-reacted to cases in disregard of the actual Terms of Service. A small controversy erupted in November of 2004 when a policy document used by the Abuse team was leaked to a group of its critics. As the critics had suspected, the policy document was indeed much stricter than what was suggested as acceptable by the Terms of Service.

As the Abuse team policies have begun to affect more users, some believe that these users are abandoning LiveJournal for other blogging sites. This has exacerbated the opinion held by some that LiveJournal is a fine host for teenage diaries and social networking but can not be a platform for serious web journaling. Others feel that the Abuse Team is performing a worthwhile job, banning only those with free accounts and ill intentions. Whether these Terms of Service and their enforcement by the Abuse team will affect LiveJournal revenue remains to be seen.

Community

As of December 2004, nearly five and a half million accounts had been created, of which approximately 1.4 million had been updated at some point in the last 30 days . Of those users who provided their date of birth, the vast majority were in the 15-23 age group. Of those who specified their gender, more than two thirds were female.

LiveJournal is most popular in English-speaking countries (although there is a language selection feature), and the United States has by far the most LiveJournal users among users who choose to list a location. There is also a sizable Russian contingent, as many Russians have turned to LiveJournal as their primary blogging engine. Following are rounded figures from December 2004:

As with most weblogs, people can comment on each other's journals and create a message board-style thread of comments — each comment can be replied to individually, starting a new thread from every one. All users, including non-paying users, can set various options for comments: they can instruct the software to only accept comments from those on their Friends list or block anonymous comments (meaning only LiveJournal users can comment on their posts), or not allow commenting at all.

In addition, LiveJournal acts as host to group discussion boards, or "communities," encompassing a myriad of subjects. (For example, there is a community dealing specifically with Misplaced Pages .) Each community has one or more maintainers, who have access to the options and settings regarding the community account.

LiveJournal relies heavily on user contributions and volunteer efforts . The LiveJournal support area is run almost entirely by unpaid volunteers. Similarly, the website is translated into other languages by volunteers. Although programming is mainly done by employees and the original creator himself, user contributions in this area are also reviewed and considered.

Frank the Goat

Frank the Goat is LiveJournal's mascot. Frank is treated like an actual living being by much of the LiveJournal userbase, and his brief "biography" as well as his "journal" reflect this. Frank the Goat's catch phrase is "Baaaaah."

Sometimes, callers to LiveJournal's PhonePost service are informed "Frank the Goat appreciates your call." This occurs randomly.

Other sites running the LiveJournal engine

Because LiveJournal is an open source project, many other communities have been designed using the LiveJournal software. These, however, with the exception of DeadJournal, tend to be unstable and short-lived. An example of this is the August 2004 closing of uJournal, which temporarily left approximately 100,000 accounts without hosting before the content was moved to AboutMyLife.

LiveJournal timeline

See also

External links

tokipona:LiveJournal

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