Argh. Again.

[emmuzka]

Link from sharpest_rose: The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network.

What we should remember is that

1) Most of the social networks still haven't found a stable profit-making revenue. It's very probable that LJ doesn't generate (enough) profit to its Russian owner.

2) At the moment, the Russian economy has gone to shitters, especially if the companies have taken non-Russian credit to fund their operations.

3) As I see it, it's probable that Sup will try to sell LJ to Microsoft, Google, Disney, FOX, or some other large technology or entertainment company. If not succeeding in that, Sup could even run down all it's non-Russian operations.

And a little angst-piece to the end. Without Lj, I wouldn't know what to do. How to communicate with my friends, and found new ones? How to find and publish fic? Keep up with fandom? Not to loose my friends, my networks, my thoughts and my emotional commitments? I don't know. At the moment, there is no alternative for me anywhere in the net.

EDIT: Here is the easiest, shoot-me-in-the-head simple way to back up your lj entries:
1) go to your info page and check when you started your journal.
2) go to here: http://www.livejournal.com/export.bml and month-by-month, create text files of your journal. You wont't have anything but the text and no comments, but it's better than nothing.

If you use Windows, I recommend that you download a free application program for making better backups with comments, but there is no a good program yet for us Mac users.

EDIT 2: At least or windows-users, I recommend LjBook service, but at them moment it's over-crowded. (I wonder why...)

Comments

[yavannie77.livejournal.com]

Ok, so that's not a great piece of news. Not by a million miles.

How the hell am I going to backup all my entries, just in case? Sheesh. It'll take forever. And indeed, what could replace LJ? It's got several features I like (like the f-locked entries) that my other blog (the long silent blogspot) doesn't have. Crap crap crappity crap, if LJ ends up crashing and burning.

I hope it won't, though. But I'll begin backuping my texts, for sure.

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

the emergency fix would be the lj-provided backup, I edited an info on how to use it in this entry. The more time-consuming fix would be to search an appropriate application from here: http://www.livejournal.com/download/

Or, just go through your lj in the search of your larger-than-life discussion and save them as pdf-files, I guess. I have done it with certain discussions with Linblad and the like, in fear that the conversation would have been deleted.

[linblad.livejournal.com]

"certain discussions with Linblad and the like"

Nyt vasta _minä_ huolestuin :)

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

I have the infamous slash debate saved ;) Better than pictures!

[mitzi007.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, no!

[yavannie77.livejournal.com]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ljarchive/

Ended up using this instead. Took about three minutes, saved comments and all without problems. Great.

[anckyria.livejournal.com]

Which file did you choose? I'm a tad baffled by the options offered.

[tvillingar.livejournal.com]

...

Fucking hell, actually. Can't think of anything else to say.

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

the thought of my trying to stitch up my life, my friends, hobbies, fandoms and writings together without lj is just really fucking scary.

[linblad.livejournal.com]

Mikä tuo free application program Windowsin uhreille on?

Siinä menevät sitten myös minun poliittiseni. Pitää helkkari tallettaa nekin...

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

En ole tutustunut, niitäkin näyttäisi olevan vähän heikosti. Pitääs kysellä.

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

http://www.ljbook.com/frontpage.php

[anckyria.livejournal.com]

Seems like everyone and their pet parrot is using this - big surprise... Here's hoping I'll manage to squeeze in at some point, damn it!

[mitzi007.livejournal.com]

Well, that sucks. I'm not going to give up hope yet, but I'm still going to do the backups.

What is fandom going to do? A forced migration, but where?

[viverra-libro.livejournal.com]

Well, there *is* IJ. It's not nearly the size of LJ, but if LJ closes, or otherwise abandons its users, it is very likely that IJ will be the place that people go. Many of the HP fandom members (and many fests) have already moved to IJ, and there is a general sense that IJ is a safer journaling site for those with certain types of content. It doesn't have the non-fandom content that LJ has, but hopefully it will continue to grow.

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

yeah, I did make my self an ij account during the big banning spree a while ago. It's still waiting, just in case. If it would ever happen that lj would just pull the plug (not very likely since the huge amount of users is the only valuable thing to sell regarding lj), Insane journal would face a migration so big that they would have to put the new accounts on hold just to prevent their systems from crashing, I think. But it's great that ij already has its stand on hosting the more "questionable" fandom products that what lj allows.

[viverra-libro.livejournal.com]

FWIW, IJ did pretty well with the GJ migration, which happened when GJ announced it was no longer upgrading/maintaining its site. Squeaky got more severs online within a day or so of when he heard the news, and the site did pretty well, all things considered. He even posted a welcome message and added the 5,000 icons option for them. Honestly, I don't know where else there *is* for us all to go. . .

I'm sure LJ won't close its doors, but with no engineers, how is it going to maintain the site? I mean, don't there have to be engineers to like, run things? Like you, I expect a quick sale is the most likely option, but who knows what kind of crappy rules will come with that! Anything would be preferable to closing/abandoning the site, though. Hey, I wonder why GJ didn't sell when they couldn't maintain the site any more . . .

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

Maybe GJ didn't have a personnel at that point to make GJ something that they could have shopped around?

One idea (that popped up in Ohnotheydidnt in all the places,) that I had not though about is a threat that lj would be sold to some *really* inconvenient buyer, like some internet watch/crusaders for the children -organization, funded by the christian fundamentalists. They could basically shut down all fandom for "decency" reasons. Or they could sell to Time Warner, which could shut down fandom parts of lj for copyright reasons.

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

Yes, there is too a good backup program for Mac!! It gets comments too, can restore everything at IJ or another LJ clone, and works for OS X, Linux, and Windows with Python installed:
http://antennapedia.livejournal.com/266462.html

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link, I'll have to try that!

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

I use it and it works perfectly.

Also, this is possibly a good entry to keep an eye on right now: http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/83519.html