news, posts by tag: 2008 - LiveJournal

The past few weeks at LiveJournal have not been without incident. Last week we updated you on our plans for 2008, including our policy and development priorities, and we've been working fervently on those plans already. During this busy time, we've also brought on new colleagues, and moved into our new San Francisco office. We've also been able to roll out a few things we hope will make your life on LJ a little better.

Less Spam. More Books.
We are now using a new CAPTCHA from reCAPTCHA during the registration process for new accounts. Not only will this help to significantly decrease the amount of spam accounts that are created, we love that reCAPTCHA is helping improve the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. In short, reCAPTCHA is helping to digitize books one word at a time, all while eliminating spam.

Get Inspired
As you know, we post a new Writer's Block prompt every day of the week. The questions are meant to inspire you to post, but clearly not every question is going to inspire every single person, which is why we've created the Writer's Block Archive. Located next to the "Suggestions" link in the Writer's Block module, you'll find a link to an archive of the last 30 days of Writer's Block prompts. Don't feel like sharing with the world what you're most neurotic about? No worries... Just check out the archives and find a question you DO want to answer. Do you have a great idea for a Writer's Block? We'd love to hear it!

News from Russia
We made a commitment to keep you abreast of important LiveJournal developments and we want to honor that commitment and let you know about a new feature we are going to test in Russia: Paid Accounts Supported by Sponsors.

The concept is simple, really. Essentially it’s a paid account, but someone else picks up the bill.

Here's how it works: Users will be offered paid accounts that are supported by sponsors. Users will be able to choose accounts from a range of brands supporting this program. Should the sponsor stop supporting this arrangement, the account will revert back to its previous type.

The accounts will have a specially designed journal style with modest branding from the sponsor; these will be designed by our creative department and approved by the sponsors. There will also be a banner in the profile page. The owners of paid/sponsored accounts will not see advertisements in other people's journals, while existing paid users will not see banners in a sponsored users' profiles. The branded styles will respect ?style=mine, which will allow paid users to avoid seeing branded styles if they wish to do so.

This new feature will soon be available for testing by Russian-speaking users. They will test the functionality of new accounts and provide us with feedback. Based on this feedback and agreements with global advertisers, we may eventually extend this new functionality to LJ users around the world. 


New V-Gifts
It wouldn't be a release without a few new V-Gifts. Throw someone a bone, send them a carnation, or let them know they're "the one" with a rubber ducky.


L to R: Peach Carnation, Purple Carnation, Smoothie Blender, Milk Tea Boba, Green Tea Boba, Frank Punching Bag, More Cowbell, DogBone, Rubber Ducky, Evil Ducky

Moving On
Jason Shellen, our VP of product development, decided to resign from his position at LiveJournal, Inc. at the beginning of the week. His decision was for family and personal reasons. We wish him the best for the future.

And Last, But Not Least...
We added a few other small things in this release... You can get all the details for this release (and all the releases) in lj_releases .

Finally... as we mentioned in the subject line, we realize we came into March a bit like a lion... So we hope you won't mind if we stay true to the old saying and go out more like a lamb. Or a goat. Whichever.

Happy Spring Everyone!

LiveJournal, Inc. has found a home! Our new office space is in SoMa, an up-and-coming district in San Francisco with a downtown/industrial vibe. SoMa is home to many internet companies (including Six Apart), the SF Museum of Modern Art, AT&T Park (Go Giants!), as well as lots of locally-owned restaurants, book stores and galleries. We're moving onto the top floor of a historic three-story building with exposed brick and flexible meeting spaces with sliding walls. There's even a little patio area where Frank can hang out on sunny San Francisco days.



The current SF-based LiveJournal, Inc. staff are in the process of moving to the new space and will be joined soon by the new employees we're actively recruiting to ensure that LiveJournal continues to be one of the best online communities available.

And while we're on the topic of how LiveJournal is one of the best online communities...

We Need Your Vote!
LiveJournal has been selected as a finalist in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards. Webware 100 is CNET's yearly awards program where users nominate and then vote for their favorite Web 2.0 apps and sites. 

LiveJournal is nominated in the "Social" category. So if you think LJ is superior to Digg, Facebook, or MySpace, we hope you'll go vote and let the world know!

Voting is open until March 31, 2008, and the winners will be announced on April 21, 2008.

Just In Case You Need A Little Convincing...
Here's just one reason, out of many, we think LiveJournal deserves your vote. So far in 2008, LiveJournal has had less downtime than MySpace, Friendster, Facebook and LinkedIn. In fact, with only ten minutes of downtime, LiveJournal has had a full 12 hours and 18 minutes less downtime than Bebo. See the pingdom post for the complete list of social networks and their downtime.

We understand that all websites go down from time-to-time, but we also understand that you depend on LJ to be available whenever you want it. A huge thanks goes out to our ops team who work non-stop to make sure that LiveJournal is accessible to you at all times. 

Advisory Board Update
Back in December, we announced the creation of the LiveJournal Advisory Board, as well as the fact that brad joined as its first member. We are thrilled to announce the addition of three new members to this international group of informed and trusted leaders from the online community. Find out more about the newest Advisory Board members in lj_2008.

New Icon for Filtered Posts
You've been asking for a way to easily keep track of which of your posts are filtered to custom groups and now you can! 

Today we released a new icon that will display on your entries that are filtered to one or more custom friends groups. In addition, the entry's metadata will automatically list which of your custom groups can see each post. 

Note that the custom friends group icon and the list of groups will only be viewable by you (the journal owner). The normal friends-only icon will be displayed as usual to your friends who can read your filtered posts. This feature is for S2 users only.

But Wait... There's More!
We've added new V-Gifts to help you celebrate the upcoming holidays. Toast a friend with a mug of green liquid on St. Patrick's Day or make some bunny's Easter sweeter with kissing chocolate bunnies. Not in a festive mood? We've got a few signs that may be just perfect for you (or as April Fool's Day jokes for your friends!). Find these V-Gifts and more in the V-Gift Shop.

L to R: Mug of green liquid, chocolate bunnies, "Ban Me" sign, "De-Friend Me" sign, "Kick Me" sign, "Troll Me" sign.

2007 was an epic year for LiveJournal. Of course, the biggest news was the launch of LiveJournal, Inc. -- a company dedicated exclusively to LiveJournal with a passion for and commitment to the technological innovation for which LiveJournal is known.

However, there were a lot of other changes and additions in 2007, amongst which were some of the following favorites:

• LJ & Photobucket. Since a picture really is worth a thousand words, we made it even easier for those of you who use Photobucket to insert images into your journal directly from the update page.
• Username Makeovers. Sure you thought BarbieGirl4Eva was a cute name. But then you came to your senses. And so did we. After two years, we finally purged usernames, making a lot more names available for you. We also made sure it remained easy for you to rename your journal or community without losing any information.
• Redesigns!
• Homepage: We made the logged-out homepage more enticing for new users, and the logged-in homepage more functional for existing users.
• V-Gift Shop: Giving has never been easier due to clearly designated themes and an easy-to-shop format.
• Vertigo Site Scheme: We introduced the Vertigo Viewing Option because we understand that while a lot of people prefer to be horizontal as much as possible, there are those of you who'd rather be upright.
• Customize Area: Streamlined to be more user-friendly.
• Message Center: It's now easier to filter and keep track of messages.
• Birthday Reminders. We brought them back, thereby eliminating the word "belated" from your vocabulary entirely.
• Automatic Voice Post Transcription. Public voice posts shorter than three minutes are now automatically transcribed for you.
• Improved Directory Search. Faster and better. Enough said.
• Private Messaging. Finally, you can communicate with another LJ user directly by sending him/her a private message.
• Lazy SMS. Now you can look something up when you're away from your computer and LJ will automatically post the Wikipedia article as a private post to your journal. Although why you'd ever leave your computer is beyond us...
• Post On-the-Go with LJ Mobile. Fine, we admit it. You can't be in front of your computer all the time, so we developed LiveJournal Mobile, a free application for your Windows Mobile or Palm device that makes it easy for you to post photos and text to your LJ. Whenever you want. From wherever you want.
• Tell A Friend. Sharing is fun, so we brought back this feature after making some improvements. If you see a public post you want to share with a friend, just click on the "Tell a Friend" link to email it.
• Adult Settings. We've given you the ability to voluntarily mark entries, journals and communities as either "Adult Concepts" or "Explicit Adult Content." We also gave users the ability to flag content they think should be reviewed, and though this was a controversial decision, it's been helpful in preventing users under the age of 18 from seeing explicit content.
• Charitable Giving. LiveJournal was involved with several charities and non-profit organizations in 2007. Amongst them: Women for Women International, NaNoWriMo, Heifer.org, Blog Action Day, and DonorsChoose.org.
• Permanent Account Sale. For all permanent accounts that were purchased during the first 36 hours of the sale, we donated $25 of the purchase price to RAINN, Witness, EFF, and Creative Commons.
• Over 250 New Themes. Because when it comes to your journal, looks do matter.
• From Russia with Live(Journal). Russian users experienced a whole new series of features rolled out in 2007, including: LiveJournal.ru, a news site that summarizes all that is new and cool on Russian LiveJournal; media integrations: LiveJournal commenting functionality was added to some of the country's main newspapers and media websites; and statistics that allow users to find out both how popular their journal or community is, and, if they choose, even see who is reading it. Along with these features, more than 100 patches have been committed to the LJ codebase for Russian users -- fixing bugs, removing limitations, and extending services.

Paid Members: Feelin' the Love
Paid members now have the ability to:

• Edit comments
• Expand collapsed comment threads in Expressive themes
• Edit the security of entries en masse
• Filter journals by security level

Paid members also received an increase to their friends and recent comment limits. Read all about the additional features/changes from 2007 in paidmembers.

2007: Something We Didn't Get Right
In our attempt to implement a zero tolerance policy towards content that supports child abuse, pedophilia, or sexual violence, we suspended about 500 journals in May of 2007 that should not have been taken down. We wish it hadn't happened at all, and we cannot say we're sorry enough. However, we did immediately realize our mistake, and all of the journals that did not break our TOS were restored as quickly as possible. We really screwed up, and when that happens, we've learned the best thing to do is just admit it and try to fix the problem to the best of our abilities.

Luckily, 2007 was also the year...

SUP Acquired LiveJournal from Six Apart.
We are so excited about the launch of LiveJournal, Inc. As we told you in December, many of the Six Apart employees who worked exclusively on LiveJournal were transferred to the new company and remain dedicated to supporting and improving this community.

We are already sinking our teeth into the 100 Day Plan and are eager to get all of your suggestions for the features you'd most like to see in 2008. We also created a new community, lj_policy, so that you have a place to state your thoughts and opinions on things like policy updates and processes. It is very important to us to create a Community Policy that accurately reflects the needs of the LiveJournal community, and we cannot do that without your input.

One of the most exciting parts about the launch of LiveJournal, Inc. is the soon-to-be created LiveJournal Advisory Board. We will announce a detailed plan for the board in the coming weeks, including the other members who will be joining LiveJournal's founder, Brad Fitzpatrick. You can read all about the 100 Day Plan, the Advisory Board, as well as ask any questions you may have in the lj_2008 community.

Looking Forward...
We have a lot of amazing things planned for 2008. And with your suggestions and feedback, we think it may be the best year yet for LiveJournal. By the time we write this news post again in January of 2009, we can guarantee that LiveJournal will be a faster, stronger, and bigger service.